Las hormigas y otros insectos en la fraseología española e italiana

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate Spanish and Italian zoomorphic metaphors in order to provide a detailed survey of their characteristics and similarities. We shall focus our attention on a corpus of lexicalized metaphors which contain at least the name of an insect. Moreover, the meaning of each expression shall concern human behaviour, human physical or psychological characteristics, and shall be the result of a metaphorical projection which describes human beings in terms of the animal kingdom.