Conceptual Metaphor

It seems that a great number of abstract religious concepts in Islamic texts are realized, both conceptually and linguistically, through cognitive strategies like metaphor and metonymy. This article tries to study the concept of death in the Holy Qurۥān, and Nahjul-Balāgha, the main Islamic Texts, to see how this (relatively) abstract concept is conceptualized in mind? Moreover, what component (s) of the recognized source concepts is (are) mapped onto the concept of death? The analysis of linguistic expressions about death shows that death is realized both metonymically and metaphorically in these two texts. There are structural, orientational and ontological metaphors in which death is the target domain of conceptualization, of which personification is more influential and specific than others. In all recognized metaphors, the death target is understood through different, but homogeneous, source concepts. The common component of nearly all these sources which is mapped on and highlighted is death power. Death has control over human and nobody can run away from it.

Unlike Aristotle, Lakoff considers metaphor as an integral part of the process of human thinking and believes that humans often automatically and unconsciously learn and use a wide range of conceptual metaphors. A large part of our scientific and philosophical literature is full of conceptual metaphors. According to Lakoff, like other abstract concepts, causation is made of a small literal part which is extended by various kinds of conceptual metaphors in several directions. The current paper shows that a large part of the metaphors introduced by Lakoff, has been used by Muslim philosophers to describe causation. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Mulla Sadra are two of the most significant Islamic philosophers. According to Ibn Sina, causation is based on ‘Causation is Transfer of Possessions’ metaphor. This metaphor depicts causation as a three-component relation in which the boundaries are very strong and sharp. According to Mulla Sadra, causation is based on ‘Causation is Motion out’ metaphor. This metaphor makes causation to have two components and decreases the strength of boundaries between the components of the relation.

According to the cognitive theory of metaphor, conceptual metaphors are an integral part ‎of the human mind so that we can see these metaphors in all aspects of human thoughts and ‎actions. A part of these metaphors is shaped based on up/down spatial orientations. Based ‎on these metaphors, spatial orientations play a significant role in human understanding of ‎many abstract concepts. These orientational metaphors are visible in ordinary and natural ‎languages, as well as in specialized and scientific texts. It is shown in this paper that a part ‎of these up-down orientational metaphors have also been used in Mullā Ṣadrā's philosophy: ‎the “Having Control or Force Is Up, Being Subject to Control or Force Is Down” metaphor ‎has been used to understand the causal relationship. The “Good Is Up and Bad Is Down” ‎metaphor makes understandable that the source of good attributes is in transcendent and ‎higher world and the source of bad attributes is in material and lowest world. The “More ‎Perfect Is Up and Less Perfect Is Down” metaphor has been used to understand the ‎gradational hierarchy of the beings.‎

Sohrab Sepehri's poetry is a rich source of novel metaphors. As a poet deeply preoccupied with convincing us to see things differently, Sepehri redefines such key concepts as life and death in his poems. To give us a new understanding of these concepts, he creates numerous metaphors. Probing into his metaphors through a Cognitive Poetic approach helps find out how he constructs them. Cognitive Poetics is a new literary discipline which, among other things, tries to find the relationship between literary works and everyday language. This paper aims to disclose the underlying cognitive structure of Sepehri's metaphors of life and death in his "Water's Footsteps." Such an analysis reveals how the poet rejects the common way of comprehending the concepts of life and death to give them new meanings. The authors argue that the poet resorts to a kind of cognitive defamiliarization by refusing to employ the common Conceptual Metaphors for death and life. Instead, he constructs the metaphor of DEATH IS LIFE. Also discussed is wherein the poem the poet comes round to the common conceptual metaphors of death.   Keywords : Sohrab Sepehri, Conceptual Metaphor, cognitive poetics, death, life

The current study investigated the distribution of animal terms in the Persian book of Marzbannameh and their metaphoric repetition in the users’ opinions, thoughts, and worthiness. By investigating the Persian book of Marzbannameh as one of the famous literary books which is rich of animal conceptual metaphors, a corpus of 376 animal terms in content has been chosen and analyzed. Four raters who were the Persian Literature teachers analyzed accurately the pertinent book for evaluating the available animal metaphors. And, two other raters who were the Persian Literature professors were asked to study the decisions and present the final propositions if they had different ideas about a concept. Moreover, as a supporting research method, focus groups were engaged by the Persian Literature teachers and professors to give their ideas and thoughts about the positive and negative qualities of the contained animals in the selected book. The results offered that animals are not distributed alike in this book, are used with diverse conceptualizations and stood for both positive and negative connotations. Also, it was found that the domestic animals generally have positive characteristics; however, some of them violate this rule, connoting just negative characteristics. After all, the wild animals, except for hawk, generally have negative characteristics.

Researchers and teaching practitioners have been trying to find more effective methods of teaching idioms due to the significance of these expressions in language learning contexts. The present study sought to investigate the effects of three verbal mnemonic tools (grouping, stories, and conceptual metaphor) on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of English idioms. Ninety EFL learners at intermediate language proficiency level who were preparing themselves to take IELTS participated in this study. They were in three groups of thirty members each. Each group was randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions and was instructed idioms using one of the verbal mnemonic devices. The collected data were analyzed using the one-way ANOVA procedure. The results showed statistically significant differences among these devices, with ‘stories’ being the most effective on recognition and ‘conceptual metaphor’ being the most beneficial in the recall of idioms. The findings of the study can have potential theoretical implications for researchers and pedagogical implications for curriculum developers, language teachers, and learners.

The present study was carried out with the purpose of examining the role of metaphorical language in the critical discourse analysis (CDA) of political texts based on a modern framework postulated by Kövecses (2015). The corpus of the study consisted of thirty-thousand words chosen as a textual sample to see which source conceptual domains are used and what generic/discursive attributes emerge upon the analysis. It was prepared through systematic random sampling from different editorial articles in Western political magazines on the relations between Iran and the West in the time span of 2010-2019. Then, Critical Metaphor Analysis was used to explain the trend and patterns in the political articles, mostly lending support to previous research by authority figures in critical and political metaphor analysis that metaphors are used in shaping political thinking, in aiding political persuasion, and in steering cognitive scenarios and models towards the shaping of interpretations of the nations as person or body metaphors. Finally, the study lent ample support to this latter view in its textual findings of the conceptual metaphors used. The findings of the study provide foreign language education in general and the EFL classrooms in particular, with some implications for further research.

This qualitative study aimed at critically analyzing the curricular materials for the teaching of English in Iran. The objective was to evaluate the adequacy of the content and ideological assumptions of EFL textbooks, focusing on the conceptual metaphors related to the concept of success. The study was conducted within the frameworks of Critical Pedagogy and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). The spirit of these two approaches lies in their rejection of all forms of domination, establishment of a theoretical discourse that enables social action, and detection of the hidden relationships between language, power and ideology through metaphorical encodings. To achieve the objective of the study, the analytical tools proposed by Chartres-Black were employed. The results of material analysis revealed that preparation and imposition of cultural materials may create situations in which identity conflict and violence are inevitable, and that the avoidance of such situations requires educators to intervene, with a mentality that education is liberating practice.  

In this paper, we argue the effects of explicit multimodal metaphor training in developing speaking and listening skills in an EFL context. To examine the effects of using conceptual metaphors in English language classrooms and assess the metaphorical ability of EFL students, we directed two measuring instruments: pre-test and post-test for control and experimental groups in both listening and speaking skills. The pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group who were exposed to explicit multimodal metaphor training were compared with the control group's scores through this bipartite study. The outcomes of this paper can shed light on teaching and learning the multimodal language in an EFL context. The findings showed that learners who were exposed to multimodal metaphors and received explicit instruction from their teacher resulted in better scores. In other words, this paper found that explicit multimodal metaphor instructions can lead to some improvements in metaphor comprehension and production in an EFL context.