Comparison between Sadness and Happiness Conceptual Metaphors in the Songs of Parvin Etesami

The aim of this research is to study conceptual metaphors of “sadness” and “happiness” as well as to compare them in the songs of Parvin Etesami (1906-1941) as an Iranian contemporary poet. In so doing, a number of 329 verses including at least one type of metaphor belonging to the domains of sadness and happiness were extracted and then analyzed in terms of types and frequency. It was found that metaphors of sadness are of higher frequency and of various types compared with those of happiness (63 vs. 32 cases). Analyzing the types of metaphors, the two domains showed similarities in the use of ontological and orientational metaphors as well as the use of source domains of time, space and healthiness. Moreover, the types of metaphors used in the corpus corresponds to a great extend to the universal list. The use of less abstract concrete concepts for source domain in order to better understanding of abstract target domain is the basic principle of cognitive linguistics.