Function Analysis of the First Sonnet of the Divan of Hafez based on Cognitive Metaphor Theory

Metaphors have been upgraded from being a word fantasizing tool to a tool for cognition and thinking by George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s cognitive metaphor theory. Lakoff and Johnson found out that metaphors do not only belong to literary language, but they are functional in everyday language, while the poets employ the metaphors in poetry and literary language for their own purposes. Conceptual metaphors make concepts tangible using “source domain” and “target domain”. “Domain” is a scope of words and meanings which make a concept imaginable or “mapped”, for example journey is the “source domain” and life is the “target domain” in “life is a journey”. In this schema we used a tangible concept for life which is an abstract concept.  Relying on this theory, the current study conducted an analysis of Hafez Divān’s first sonnet to prove that the sonnet is based on and fully explainable by “love is a journey” conceptual metaphor; in fact all the sonnet’s components serve to induce this concept.