Comparison of the Metaphorical Reflection of Time in Two Discourses of Persian Press Texts

Abstract

In this descriptive-analytic research, different Persian time metaphors reflected in political and economic articles of Shargh Newspaper are compared in the general framework of cognitive semantics, with emphasis on Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (1980), while using Núñez and Sweetser’s approach (2006) and mathematical logic. The goals are determining: (1) adequacy of the theory, (2) different types of time metaphor and their dominant pattern in the articles, (3) their distribution, and (4) how they are expressed. Research population consists of all political and economic articles of Shargh Newspaper in 1396 and 60 randomly chosen articles make the sample. The results approved the adequacy of the theory and indicated that time-moving metaphor with the highest frequency (72%) was the dominant pattern while other patterns were ego-moving metaphor (%18) and time-moving-without-ego metaphor (%9). Time-ego-moving metaphors (%1) didn’t make any pattern. The results revealed no significant difference between the above-mentioned metaphors in each kind of the articles but revealed a significant difference between time-moving metaphor and the others in data. Moreover, most temporal concepts were expressed via spatial concepts. This means time is more basic and vital than space in political and economic issues.

Keywords

• cognitive semantics
• conceptual metaphor theory
• time metaphor
• persian press texts
• economic texts
• political texts