Cognitive analysis of conceptual metaphor and its types in discourse of Shahrnūsh Pārsipur’s The Dog and the Long Winter based on the theory of Fauconnier and Turner

In literary studies, metaphor is considered as the basic element of creativity and a characteristic expression of the author's artistic individuality. Metaphor can be used by writers in various social contexts to support the basic propositions and beliefs of a specific ideology or point of view. Every social context contains a dominant ideology and several subordinate ideologies. In the battle between these ideologies in social contexts, metaphors play an important role. Fauconnier and Turner (1995) raised a new issue in cognitive linguistics and metaphor by showing that all metaphors are not made from matching the source and target domains, as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). According to Fauconnier and Turner (1999), mental spaces are small conceptual domains that are created in a person's mind while speaking or thinking. Contemporary novels, including Shahrnūsh Pārsipur’s The Dog and the Long Winter (Sag va Zemestan Boland) are more appropriate and opt to be viewed from this theoretical point, due to their metaphorical language and the proximity of their language to the metaphorical pole; they are free from the limitations governing some formal types of literature such as classical poetry and technical prose. The current research is a theoretical in the sense that it is library-based and the data is investigate via the descriptive-analytical method. To this end, Pārsipur’s novel was carefully studied, and its metaphors were thoroughly extracted. Then, all the metaphors were described and analyzed in order to determine the conceptual domain used in the construction of their mental spaces. The findings revealed that the conceptual domains used in the metaphors of The Dog and the Long Winter play a role in the construction of the mental spaces proposed in the theory of Fauconnier and Turner. The metaphors were classified in terms of eight group as follows:  ontological metaphors (phenomenal or material), characterizing metaphors, directional metaphors for positive and negative entities, structural metaphors (the conceptual domain of objects, body parts, and the concept of life, natural phenomena and animals). In general, it can be said that, in all constructed metaphors, the use of conceptual domains in the construction of metaphors and conveying specific meanings to the audience has been done intentional.