Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
PhD in Persian language and literature
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature, ,Amin Police University, Tehran, Iran.
3
Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature, Amin Police University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The present article is an inquiry to answer the question of what function conceptual metaphor has in explaining abstract religious concepts. One way to understand this issue is to rely on the philosophical characteristics of cognition and analyze the metaphorical capacity of the mind. In this view, metaphor is a mental phenomenon that becomes objective and tangible through language; therefore, it is called a conceptual metaphor. By analyzing the corpus of conceptual metaphors, one can understand the mechanism of cognition and the strategy of the mind. Cognitive linguists, following this philosophy, sometimes consider metaphor to have a cultural basis and sometimes an experiential and physical foundation. Unlike structuralists and formalists, who considered metaphor to be an accidental and literary aspect of language, they consider metaphor to be a mental and cognitive schema. The authors of the present study believe that meaning-making in Khutbah al-Ashbah of Nahj al-Balaghah is based on conceptual metaphor and has been carried out in two aspects; therefore, they try to identify the forms of expressing conceptual metaphors of religion, using a descriptive-analytical method, by focusing on the ninety-first sermon of Nahj al-Balaghah, "Ashbah", and study its cognitive stylistics. The outcome of the present research's analysis is that conceptual metaphor and its related cognitive processes; elaboration, specification, conventionalization, focalization, experiential embodiment, and integration with rhetorical metaphor have been among the stylistic techniques of Imam Ali (peace be upon him) in organizing and understanding abstract concepts.
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