An Analysis of Time-related Metaphors in Yadollah Behzad’s Poetry

Although the metaphor was first considered a deviation from the standard norms of automatic language and being solely confined to works of literature, it is now viewed as a basic characteristic of the human mind and accordingly ordinary usage of language by cognitive linguists. The fundamental belief is that human beings tend to comprehend abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ideas and manifest this correspondence in their language. Time is one of those abstract domains whose actual manifestation in ordinary and literary styles has interested cognitive linguists since the 1980s. The present study seeks to investigate the metaphors that have been employed by Yadollah Behzad Kermanshahi for the concrete presentation of time in his poetry. By doing so, not only the source and target domains of time-related metaphors will be exhaustively introduced but also the hidden layers of Behzad’s viewpoint toward time will be discussed in detail.The following three questions constitute the core of this study: 1) What are the main mechanisms for the metaphorical expression of time in Behzad’s poetry? 2) What are the underlying layers of these time-related metaphorical expressions? 3) How could the cognitive analysis of these metaphorical expressions lead us to a comprehensive understanding of Behzad’s conception of time? Yadollah Behzad was a major Persian poet whose works have placed him in the circle of famous contemporary literary figures both in his hometown, Kermanshah, and Iran. Although his works offer various potentials for conducting original research projects on the nature of thematic and metrical characteristics of Persian contemporary classical poetry, the available literature on Behzad’s artistic career seems still too weak.After presenting an introduction of our theoretical assumptions based on Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) pioneering work in the second section, we have allocated the third part to the cognitive treatment of our data, which have been taken from Behzad’s collections of Gol-e Birang and Yadgar-e Mehr. Going through the available examples of metaphorical expressions of time in Behzad’s selected works, we first pick those which we deem as more artistic and then try to elaborate on their internal constituents including their source and target domains and also mapping mechanisms. The results show that Behzad has employed 10 mega metaphorical schemata, each of which contains several micro metaphorical domains: Human-oriented Schema: This is one of the widely-employed schemata for the concrete manifestation of time in Behzad’s poetry. This general schema encompasses a number of micro metaphorical domains including human-oriented metaphors with negative imaginations, human-oriented metaphors with bifaceted imaginations, and human-oriented metaphors with positive imaginations. Animal-oriented Schema: As another generally-referred-to category for the linguistic manifestation of time in Behzad’s poetry, this schema includes two metaphorical domains of time as a crow and time as a horse. Comestible Schema: This domain is of very limited use in Behzad’s works, therefore we could not find a variety of subdomains for it. Place and Container Schema: As was the case with the animal-oriented schema, this category consists of two micro metaphorical domains including time as an encircled space, and time as a refillable container. Object Schema: This schema, too, encompasses two micro metaphorical domains of time as a countable object, and time as a colorable object. Book-oriented Schema: This schema is not of various types in Behzad’s poetry, therefore, we did not propose any micro subdomain for it. Natural Element-oriented Schema: As was the case with the previous mega metaphorical schema, this category is too limited in Behzad’s works to contain micro subdomains. Time as an Agent: In the previous parts, we were mainly concerned with physically-embodied mega schemata which were used to concretely portray time in Behzad’s poetry. Besides, in his attempt for metaphorical expression of time, Behzad has also referred to time as a natural agent from which certain phenomena evolve. Tangible Abstract Schema: Although this might seem paradoxical at first, this schema can get a convincing definition in Behzad’s artistic style. Instead of using purely concrete categories as the source domain, in certain cases, Behzad deliberately makes use of some abstract categories as the source domain for metaphorical expression of time. These domains, however, are less abstract than the “time” itself. Duration of Time: This schema is also of different nature than the classical physical schemata, which are employed for metaphorical expression of time. In this case, Behzad uses the very duration of time to concretely depict the abstract concept of “time”.