Love, One Concept with Three Metaphorical Perceptions: An Analysis of the System of Conceptual Metaphors in Sawanih al-Ushaq

As metaphors are cognitively originated, examining a text’s conceptual metaphors yields a new understanding of its author’s cognition. Therefore, an analysis of the relationship between the conceptual metaphors in a text and the structure arising from those metaphors leads to a more precise understanding and a better explanation of the text, and facilitates the analysis of its semantic structure and its author’s worldview. Thus, the present article attempts to answer three key questions: What are the most important conceptual metaphors in Sawanih al-Ushaq? What relationships do exist between these metaphors? What are the characteristics of the structure arising from these metaphors? In an effort to answer these questions inductively, the conceptual metaphors in each chapter are separately examined and the most important metaphors in the text are identified based on the two criteria of ‘frequency’ and ‘position in the structure of metaphors’. The analysis shows that the conceptual domain of ‘love’ is the most important abstract conceptual domain which is comprehended with the aid of the conceptual domains of ‘bird’, ‘mirror’, ‘plant’, ‘derivation’, ‘sun’, ‘king’, and ‘destruction’. Among them, destruction has a special place as it can be used in order to comprehend the ultimate stage of love: annihilation. Destruction, as a megametaphor, is embodied by the conceptual domains of ‘intoxication’, ‘fire’, ‘war’, and ‘devouring’. Finally, the most significant conceptual metaphors in Sawanih al-Ushaq are: ‘love is the eternal part of human existence’; ‘love is a mirror’; and ‘love is destruction’.