Conceptual Domains of Word ‘Guidance’ in the Holy Quran: A Critical Analytic Study of Conceptual Metaphor

The present research is aimed to evaluate conceptual domains via evaluating conceptual metaphors and conceptual keys of word “guidance” on the basis of Charteris-Black’s (2004) viewpoint on critical analysis of metaphor. The research is made within all verses of last twelve minuties of the holy Quran. The conceptual keys are conceptualized in the particular lexical factors’ format and are explained by specific conceptual domains via its descriptive– analytical method and it’s cognitive linguistic framework. The data collected from the aforementioned verses are shown in the form of tables, including conceptual metaphors and conceptual keys related to the word guidance, together with explanations for each table. Due to the limited space of the article, similar verses have not been mentioned in the paper.

is to analyse which conceptual domains are used to explain conceptual metaphors and conceptual keys of the word “guidance” within the Quranic corpus. Black's approach in explaining the conceptual fields of the Quranic verses, is a new approach in the field, which by presenting extensive dimensions of conceptual metaphor analysis and with a critical method, provides a suitable platform for research in various discourse areas, especially the holy books. The importance of his approach is not because of the introduction of the conceptual areas of metaphor, but because of the introduction of methods of using metaphor in persuading the audience to accept discourse, in line with the goals of the speaker. According to Black, metaphor is a literary technique to persuade the audience to accept a certain point of view. He deals with the use of metaphor in concealing the underlying persuasive role, which is often not clear and transparent, and with a critical approach to metaphor, he tries to show the political and ideological motivations in the texts. Based on this, he considers a conceptual metaphor to be the result of a number of metaphorical expressions and believes that the conceptual key is a higher-level metaphor that expresses how multiple metaphors relate to each other. According to him, conceptual metaphors and conceptual keys express the motivation of specific higher-level metaphors and indicate the type of ideas related to the source area that is supposed to be transferred to the metaphorical destination area. Black proposes the definitions of metaphor in terms of linguistic, cognitive and pragmatics; he believes that metaphor is one of those conscious choices of language that hides the underlying social processes and its analysis is an effective factor in identifying textual content.

The research results determines the following 14 conceptual domains within the Quranic corpus: religion, journey, consciousness, monotheism, light, inspiration, authority, remedy, piety, judgment, effort, reward, climate, creation. Examining the use of these domains in the critical approach to metaphor and what words these areas use to encourage the audience to accept metaphors shows that the most use of conceptual keys has been in the field of religion, which is with the words of the Qur'an, prayer Prophet, revelation, zakat, Islam, faith and monotheism.