From Sex and the City to Sex Education: Sex-Related Metaphors in TV Series

This paper focuses on sex-related metaphors in two TV series, Sex and the City (1998-2004) and Sex Education (2019-2023). Although there are major differences between the two series, both are popular and successful TV series and were, at the time they were released, considered as transgressive and progressive when tackling the taboo topic of sex. Although it has been receding, it nevertheless remains a partially taboo topic that characters speak of by means of X-phemisms (Allan and Burridge 1991; 2006). After a brief study of the use of literal language (using WMatrix5, Rayson 2009), this paper focuses on metaphorical X-phemisms, as metaphor arguably is the most prominent mechanism of lexical semantic change and is a particularly productive tool when creating new euphemisms to mention taboo topics (Crespo Fernández 2006a; 2008; 2015). The study seeks to determine whether the conceptual sex metaphors in Sex and the City and Sex Education reflect the perceived differences in the conceptualisation of sex in the two series, since Sex Education has been argued to be more inclusive. 66 occurrences were collected in the first two seasons of Sex and the City and 68 in the first two seasons of Sex Education (MIP, see Pragglejaz group 2007. The metaphorical expressions were then classified according to the source domain with which the correspondences are established (CMT, see Lakoff and Johnson 1980). The results are similar in the two TV series. The main conclusions that can be drawn are that even if there is some evolution in the language of sex in general, the source domains used for sex-related conceptual metaphors are so deeply anchored in our cognitive systems that dysphemistic, violent, dehumanising metaphors undergo very slow change.