A contrastive study of the metaphors of anger in Persian and English

This study investigates the use of metaphors of anger in Persian and English، based on cognitive linguistics. The paper primarily adopts the cognitive-linguistic model of Lakoff and Kövecses (1987). The results of the study indicate some similarities and differences between the metaphors of anger in Persian and English. Similarities are mostly attributed to a kind of universal motivation for the metaphors employed in these languages which has its root in the similar physiological responses to this emotion and also the similar ideas of the speakers of these two languages about their bodies. The differences are mostly related to having different cultural-ideological backgrounds، coding and decoding the information، the degrees of lexical elaboration، and even the type of lexical elements. In short، the current study reveals that metaphors of anger encompass an integrative mechanism representing not only linguistic and conceptual aspects of language use but socio-culturally-constructed meanings as well.