Women Metaphors in Persian Colloquial Terms
Authors
1
Postgraduate in Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba`i University, Iran
2
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba`i University, Iran
Abstract
Conceptual metaphor is a new field of study in cognitive Linguistics, which has inspired many researchers from all over the world since its introduction by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). It is formed when a generally abstract conceptual domain is perceived via another domain, which is concrete. Conceptual metaphors control various aspects of human life and affect their cultures and actions. Colloquial terms, in every language, are widely used and a rich part of the folklore and a very rich source of conceptual metaphors. The present study aims at studying conceptual metaphors of women hidden in Persian colloquial terms. In this respect, five Persian colloquial dictionaries were used to gather the terms associated with women. The present study was a qualitative and a purposive sampling type. The required data was gathered by library indexing. Having carefully scanned the entries one
by one along with their meanings, the colloquial terms were gathered as well as their meanings, the resource and the page number. They were alphabetically listed. Having excluded the unrelated or repeated items with the same meaning, 910 terms were finally selected. To determine the conceptual metaphor types, Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Kövecses (2010) categories were applied. Considering the meaning of each term, its conceptual metaphor was determined and, overall, 24 basic (Mega) metaphor were identified. The resource domain obtained from these metaphors are family, social and occupational relations, status (moral-physical-mental), object (object-goods-tool), ethnicity, plant, food, animal, supernatural beings, color, nature, injury and disease, action, famous person (religious-historical-literary), buildings, weakness, recreational events and game devises, fire, fabric and clothing, place (outside-inside), devil and body limbs. Based on the cognitive role of these metaphors, four types of ontological, structural, directional and image were observed. In addition, there were cases in which two conceptual metaphors were assigned at the same time and overlapped, which are: image-ontological metaphor, structural-ontological metaphor and directional-ontological metaphor. This research will help to know the conceptual metaphors related to women and the widely used fields to describe them.
by one along with their meanings, the colloquial terms were gathered as well as their meanings, the resource and the page number. They were alphabetically listed. Having excluded the unrelated or repeated items with the same meaning, 910 terms were finally selected. To determine the conceptual metaphor types, Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff and Turner (1989) and Kövecses (2010) categories were applied. Considering the meaning of each term, its conceptual metaphor was determined and, overall, 24 basic (Mega) metaphor were identified. The resource domain obtained from these metaphors are family, social and occupational relations, status (moral-physical-mental), object (object-goods-tool), ethnicity, plant, food, animal, supernatural beings, color, nature, injury and disease, action, famous person (religious-historical-literary), buildings, weakness, recreational events and game devises, fire, fabric and clothing, place (outside-inside), devil and body limbs. Based on the cognitive role of these metaphors, four types of ontological, structural, directional and image were observed. In addition, there were cases in which two conceptual metaphors were assigned at the same time and overlapped, which are: image-ontological metaphor, structural-ontological metaphor and directional-ontological metaphor. This research will help to know the conceptual metaphors related to women and the widely used fields to describe them.
Keywords
Subjects
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