A Study of Metaphors in Hafez Shirazi’s Sonnets: A Cognitive Linguistics - Approach

In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is not generally a linguistic or specifically a literary phenomenon. But it is a cognitive and mental one through which what we see in language is a mere representation. In fact, literary and aesthetic metaphors are just subcategories of metaphors. The present research is an attempt to study different types of metaphors in Hafez Shirazi’s poems based on cognitive linguistics. To carry out the study, first of all the sonnets were scrutinized and then instances of ontological, structural, and directional metaphors were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of the study revealed that the poet had used these metaphors with the frequency of 77.85%, 15.24%, and 6.91% respectively. Furthermore, the study showed that the poet had used love, mystic, rougish, eulogical, and philosophical mappings in stating ontological metaphors. he had used right, inside, outside, niche, high, front, down, base, head, and far directions to convey directional metaphors.