Orientational Metaphors in Abdullah Pashew’s Poetry

Abstract

Orientational metaphor is one kind of the three types of conceptual metaphor. It was introduced by Lakoff and Johnson for the first time in the 1980s. They argue that metaphor is a fundamental element not only in the language of poetry and literature but also in everyday language. The direction in the orientational metaphor is apparently meaningful and often biaxial and bipolar. Lakoff and Johnson’s ideas evolved later and developed into a theory with the required principles and foundations. This research, using a descriptive-documentary method, seeks to study the orientational metaphor and its position in Abdullah Pashew’s poetry as a prominent intellectual modernist Kurdish poet. The language of Pashew’s poetry is literary and culturally rich and at the same time close to the daily language of people and for this reason, it contains a vast number of words and idioms, and literary and technical terms and phrases. The samples of the orientational metaphor in his poetry are mostly biaxial/polar and are presented in above/below, far/near, forward/back, long/short forms, and other similar binary directions.

Keywords

• conceptual metaphor
• orientational metaphor
• kurdish language
• abdullah pashew
• contemporary kurdish poetry