Conceptual Metaphor of Women in the Fictional Literature of the Eighties Based on the Critical Metaphor Analysis Approach

The link between language and literature in transferring ideologies is an attractive and practical field in contemporary linguistics. Since, in addition  to the language, our way of thinking is metaphorical, one can achieve the dominant thinking in a discourse by examining the metaphors of a text. The study of prevailing thoughts in fiction is important because of the interaction between the audience and the community. In this research, the effect of feminist ideology was evaluated through the analysis of conceptual metaphors. The quantitative data of this research, which were examined through a descriptive-analytic method have consisted of 136 conceptual metaphors with the female target domain, selected and evaluated from the works of six male and female authors (of the eighties(AH)). The results indicated that 17 source domains including animal, plant, food, dish, struggle, religion, object, trade, occupation, well, water, fire, light, instrument, event, mountain and the mine is used to conceptualize the female. A few metaphors have been influenced by feminist thinking in the discourse of the story, and the feminist ideology of dominant thinking is not considered in this decade, although the stereotypical attitude toward women has been somehow changed in these fictional works, the dominant ideology still looks traditional.