A Comparison of Conceptual Metaphor of Animosity in Middle Persian Texts and Dari Persian (A Case Comparison: Minooye Kherad and Gulistan)

Minooye Kherad is a consultative text in Middle Persian including questions and replies to which an imaginary character named “Dana” asks Minooye Kherad and he replies to them. Gulistan is a prose including an introduction and eight chapters written by Saadi. The present study has been done with a descriptive-analytical approach and compares conceptual metaphor of animosity in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan. Animosity is a common moral abomination of the two texts and its happening in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan was 5 and 4, respectively. After derivation of all animosity metaphors in both texts, four metaphors were found regarding conception of animosity namely as: object, action, device, status. Even though with a difference in frequency, object and action were common in both texts. The most frequent metaphor is “Animosity is an action.” which was observed in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan with occurrence of 40% and 75%, respectively. “Animosity is a device.” and “Animosity is an action.” were only observed in Minooye Kherad that may imply on the fact that even though the writer or writers of Minooye Kherad believed that animosity can be an action, it can also be a device and a status which was not observed in Gulistan. 75% occurrence of “Animosity is an action”, in Gulistan may imply on the writer as a pragmatic one that recognizes animosity as an action more than anything else.