Metaphor in the Headlines of Sport Newspapers in Iran: case study of Football metaphor

The present research aims to study the headlines of Sport Newspapers in Iran. It is a descriptive- analytical research which studies the metaphorical expressions available in the headlines of two Newspapers Khabare Varzeshi and Piroozi by using conceptual metaphor in the autumn of 2014. Following the study of 108 metaphorical expressions, the conceptual metaphors are classified in ten metaphorical domains. Findings show that the metaphor "football is a war" has high frequency among metaphorical expressions concerning the football headlines. The source domain includes not only the war, but also some domains such as football as a machine, natural phenomena, animals, magic, sports, test, direction, show and building. In this research, metaphors are classified in three structural, ontological and directional categories. Therefore, main parts of metaphors belong to structural, ontological and directional categories respectively