Feminine Conceptual Metaphors in the Poetry of Forough Farrokhzad and Ghadat al-Saman

Contrary to traditional theories where metaphor was considered as one of the four rhetorical techniques, in cognitive theory, metaphor literary language is not unique to literary language, but it exists in the totality of language. “metaphor is not just a matter of language, i.e., of mere words. We shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical”. Conceptual or cognitive metaphors express abstract concepts in the form of concrete concepts and by changing their realms, they help in better understanding and comprehending them. This paper aims exclusively at investigating the function of conceptual metaphors in Forough Farrokhzad’s and Ghadat al-Saman’s poetry. in cognitive approach, concepts like time, quantity, state, change, action, reason, goal, method, and aspect are understood in a metaphorical way. Forough Farrokhzad and Ghadat al-Samman, who are iconoclastic modern poets expressing women’s sufferings in traditional societies, have made use of concrete metaphors in expressing their thoughts and attitudes. For example, they have used metaphors like life is war, love is fire and the like, they have talked about women's problems. The theoretical background of this study is based on ‘the theory conceptual metaphor’, which has promoted the role of metaphor as an aesthetic technique to a thinking instrument.