Cognitive Investigation of Conceptual Domains of Metaphors of Time Nouns in the Holy Quran

Conceptual metaphors have their roots in cognitive linguistics. Their function is marking abstract concepts and their hidden meaning using building elements. Time is amongst the frequent, abstract concepts in the Holy Quran. In fact, the concepts of the holy book correspond to its ideational structure. So, investigating the way time is reflected in terms of the guidance of man, which is the purpose of the book, would be significant. The research is a descriptive-analytical one using library resources to explicit conceptual metaphors of time nouns. It was found that time can be categorized into four macro metaphorical models with themes of hereafter, pointing the exact time of praying, and taking lesson from lapse of time. The macro metaphor models framed based on place and movement were the most frequent ones. It is worth mentioning that space, things, departure, movement, and live being as source domains were considered as the target domain. In this metaphorical conceptualization, such elements of spaces were used as directionality characteristics, farness, nearness, the in or out space, and wideness, as well as mobility, and live beings’ characteristics or human moods such as rebellion, fear, etc.