The use of visual schema Rubaiyat Bafqi from the perspective of semantics

One of the principles of cognitive semantics is the corporatization of the concepts. Language users build basic conceptual structures according to their physical experiences in the world through which they can trigger the whole meaning and interpret other more abstract events. Mark Johnson categorized these concrete experiences under the name of “image schema” theory and divided it into 3 subcategories called path schema, containment schema and force schema. Accordingly this paper tries to analyze Vahshiye Bafghi poems to figure out the extent at which this salient poet has used these tools to convey meaning. For this purpose, 66 out of Bafghi’s quatrains which include 264 hemistiches, has been selected. The analyses revealed that 114 cases the poet has used the image schema to convey meaning. In most cases, the path schema has been used with verb like “pass, hasten, and go” which imply some sort of motion. After that, the containment schema, using words such as snare and seclusion, have the most share in meaning construal. And finally the force schema with using expressions which imply separation and banned items, have been used by Bafghi to facilitate the process of decoding and interpretation on his intentions.