Examining Conceptual Metaphors of the Foundation Schema in Middle School Arabic Textbooks

Cognitive semantics is a branch of cognitive linguistics inspiring effective tools and methods for various texts analyses. George Lakoff proposed the theory of conceptual metaphor. According to this theory, metaphors go beyond the borders of being a tool to embellish and beautify the speech and play a significant role in all levels of concepts. Also, conceptual metaphors, from Kuchsh’s point of view, are based on the two categories of foundation schema and foundation knowledge. The present study, after reviewing the literature on contemporary metaphor theory, the conceptual metaphorical schemas of the foundation in the Arabic textbooks of the middle school were examined. The research concluded that the Arabic textbooks are religion-based. As most of the religious concepts are subjective and their meaning is understood based on the schema, the schema of the object (body) has the highest percentage in textbooks, therefore, abstract concepts in the textbooks of the middle schools are conceptualized based on object schema. This descriptive-analytic research was operationalized through two stages: After elaborating on the theoretical literature on metaphors, in the first step, the Arabic textbooks of the middle school (as the first educational encounter of Iranian students with the Arabic language) was evaluated based on a cognitive approach. To do so, the conceptual metaphors of the mentioned books were extracted and classified based on the foundation schema. In the second step, the source and target areas of fundamental schema metaphors were identified separately and the usage of conceptual metaphors in the preparation of textbooks was described