Abstract
Metaphors of life are generally based on spatial-temporal and experiential conceptualisations. Life is usually likened to a journey, a stream flow, to being "here" in contrast to being "elsewhere"; it is vertically positioned above us; it is conceived as a material entity that can be possessed, received or given, or as a being struggled with, reckoned with and parted with; it is usually contrived as a vessel or its content.
Life appears to be both the most precious value and a heavy burden. All these conceptual metaphors are conventionalised, and as systemic linguistic data may be found in dictionaries.
In contrast, the study aims at exploring textual data, examining conceptualisations of life in a selection of Czech popular songs that combine convention and outstanding creativity, especially in expressions in terms of "poetic definition", typically as X = Y (Voskovec and Werich's Život je jen náhoda /Life is but an Accident/, Kainar's Černá kára /The Black Cart/, Blažek's Život je bílý dům /Life is a White House/, Suchý's texts). In other words, the study aims at establishing aspects of life as conceptualised in songs, as well as alterations of conventional metaphors through their extension and elaboration.
Due to the intersemiotic nature of the song, employing verbal and musical codes, the study also touches on the multimodality of metaphor.