The purpose of the study is to explore the extent of Turkish adolescents’ embodiment of the universal conceptual metaphor love is a journey and their culture-specific reflection of the metaphor in their use of Turkish. The metaphor is approached in the study within the framework of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory. According to the theory, perceived resemblances between certain components
of the target concept love and those of the source concept journey are the underlying
cognitive motivation that allows the former to be conceptualized in terms of the latter. This study investigates the Turkish adolescents’ embodiment and linguistic manifestations of the metaphor love is a journey in the 87 compositions comparing a love relationship to a journey that were written by students attending Mersin High School of Social Sciences in the 2022– 2023 academic year. The compositions were scrutinised to identify linguistic metaphors and other expressions exemplifying the mappings between love and journey. It was observed in the adolescents’ compositions that the correspondences between love and journey in American culture also apply to Turkish culture, and these were sometimes expressed through culture- specific expressions. On the other hand, a novel mapping was also found which was hidden in American culture but highlighted in Turkish – one between choosing the right lover for love and choosing the right companion before a journey. Quite a few students mentioned that one should choose the right travel companion for the love journey. In a sense, the right companion for love journey is commodified – he/ she is conceptualized in some sentences as if he/ she were a most basic piece of luggage to be taken with the lover, because the love journey is difficult to take without an eligible companion. With this new mapping in the love ıs journey metaphor and the way the other mappings were described in the compositions, a new model specific to Turkish culture emerged in the study. Another remarkable finding is that the richest metaphoric expressions in our data were in the adolescents’ mapping between obstacles met on a journey and difficulties in a romantic relationship. The love journey was described as a challenging one full of sufferings and obstacles. Another noteworthy finding concerns the mapping between the goal of love relationship and the journey destination. It was found that two thirds of the adolescents set vague or pessimistic goals for the love journey rather than immediate concrete ones. The
destination of the love journey was often stated to be towards the unknown and eternity. There was also a horrifying pessimism in many papers that love is a meandering journey with negative ends such as death, annihilation, zero, void, and the Sırat Bridge (the narrow bridge over the hell). To sum up, the study sheds light on the current picture and culture-specific embodiment of the love ıs a journey metaphor in Turkish adolescents’ minds, adding new elaborations to the Turkish love model