The Role of Metaphors in the Construction and Perception of Nahj-ul-Balagha’s Social System: A Case Study of Animal Metaphors on the Basis of Cognitive Sociolinguistics

Nahj-ul-Balagha is a religious discourse belonging to the beginnings of Islam, and a source of other Shiie’s discourses, composed of a social system including morality and politics. It is composed of many cognitive tools including conceptual metaphors which are based on the immediate geographical context of that text, like ANIMAL (here CAMEL) metaphors. This research studies the role of this metaphor in the construction and perception of Nahj Ul- Balagha’s social system on the basis of Cognitive Sociolinguistics. To do so, the explanatory model of conceptual metaphor in Lakoff (1980) has been applied. The main questions are: which semantic parts of CAMEL concept have been used for evoking Nahj Ul- Balagha’s social system and how. Moreover, to make a coherent and organized discourse, how the mappings from CAMEL domain onto HUMAN domain function. The analysis shows that among different semantic properties of CAMEL, just its behavior and relations to humans have been used. Moreover, the concept of CAMEL and its relevant meanings are explanatory strategies which are used by Imam Ali (PBUH) to coherently shade lights on the social issues like death and sin, Jihad and its value, riot and its dangers, the world and its disadvantages, ruling and its destructive consequences, enemy recognition and its necessity.