A Cognitive Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors in Al-Kulaynī’s al-Kāfī from the Perspective of Lakoff and Johnson

After the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors"We Live By" (1980), contemporary researchers used it as a basis for a new look at the vast world of metaphors. From this perspective, metaphors involve a cognitive and abstract process. Religious books in particular abound with abstract concepts. Undoubtedly, the most important source to access the traditions of the infallibles (AS) is Al-Kulaynī’s Kitāb al-Kāfī. Al-Kulaynī assembled his book as a hadith collection including concepts and topics as diverse as theological concepts, laws, history and stories. In the present study, we tried to extract the metaphors of Kitāb al-Kāfī from the perspective of Lakoff and Johnson via a through literature review and to evaluate the degree to which the infallibles (AS) used this cognitive literary device via a content analysis. Our evaluations show that conceptual metaphors are used most frequently in the volumes known as Uṣūl al-Kāfī and in relation to theological concepts. Moreover, conceptual metaphors in these volumes are mostly used to help form an ontology. However, Furūʿ al-Kāfī is mostly engaged with structural metaphors. In the end, we present a corpus analysis and discuss the most frequent areas of origin and destination.