In chapter 3, we saw a number of conceptual metaphors that are good candidates for universal or at least near-universal metaphors. We also took up the issue of what might possibly explain the universal status of the metaphors. It was pointed out, furthermore, that the conceptual metaphors we looked at are most likely to be (near-)universal at a generic level. In the present chapter, I will examine the culturally embedded instantiations of these generic-level metaphors to see whether they maintain their potentially universal status. Put simply, the question is whether culturally embedded specific-level versions of the presumably (near-)universal generic-level metaphors are also likely to be candidates for (near-)universal metaphors. I will show that they are not. In a way, this is an obvious and expected result. We expect conceptual metaphors to vary cross-culturally. This is almost as natural and obvious as the variation of metaphors at the level of metaphorical linguistic expressions. However, the reasons for this variation are not obvious, and I will take up that issue in the chapter on the causes of metaphor variation (see chapter 10).

The variation that conceptual metaphors display at the specific level is not the only kind of variation that can occur. I will discuss several others. One of them is the case in which a culture uses a set of different source domains for a particular target domain, or conversely, a culture uses a particular source domain for the conceptualization of a set of different target domains.