Metaphor and phraseology from the language of bullfighting in Spanish

Mass-audience events provide languages with fertile sources of metaphor. Such events display pronounced spatial parameters, dynamicity and purposive activity, all of which have been shown to enable metaphor processes. Furthermore, the mass following and the experiential recurrence of such events facilitate conventionalisation and phraseological development. This article examines such a phenomenon, namely, the deployment of metaphorical and phraseological expressions of bullfighting origin in the ordinary use of the Spanish language. Taking evidence from existing inventories plus references to literature and the press, the article categorises the diverse manifestations into coherent patterns in consonance with cognitive linguistics metaphor studies. It shows that the different participants and different aspects of the bullfighting event motivate those patterns. As well as highlighting the cultural specificity of this phraseology, the article also shows its potential in cross-sectional and longitudinal terms – it functions across a variety of contexts as well as in depth in any particular context.