Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies of WAR in Hatim Ta'i's Poetry: A Cognitive Approach

Cognitive linguistics, as a modern interdisciplinary, by examining the relationship between mind and language, believes that language is a mind representation. Thus, by deeply investigating the poems of the pre-Islamic period (622-494 AD) through cognitive semantics methods, we can figure out the mentality of poets according to their environment and living style. Hatim Ta'i is among Pre-Islamic poets, whose poetry's analysis can present his thinking system. Considering "war" as one of the most important life affairs of his period, presenting a new research with a cognitive approach on Hatim Ta'i's poem can help us in identifying the poet's intellectual system in particular, and social life in the pre-Islamic period in general. So metaphorical and metonymic expressions have been extracted and analyzed according to Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The results show that Hatim Ta'i has used the objective matters available in the pre-Islamic period, such as fire and animal, to embody "war" in the mind of the audience in the form of a conceptual metaphor. Moreover, in the conceptual metonymies, mentioning the subtle aspects and details of war, warfare and warriors indicates the very high connection of this social phenomenon with the poet's life.