Investigation and Analysis of Illocutionary-Metaphorical Structures of Nahj Al-Balaghah Based on Cognitive Linguistics

Nahj al-Balaghah is undoubtedly the most comprehensive book after the Qur'an, which can be considered a human guide in all aspects of life and can be responsible for guiding humanity in various fields. This precious book contains a wide range of abstract concepts that cannot be expressed in everyday language, and to make the subject understandable to the audiences, appropriate linguistic tools must be used, among which metaphor is one of the most widely used tools. Imam Ali (AS) sometimes used illocutionary acts in his words to encourage the audiences to do good things and to warn them about evil deeds. Therefore, the present study tries to extract those sentences with metaphorical structures responsible for conveying abstract concepts from Nahj al-Balaghah sermons and analyze them based on cognitive metaphor. The research results indicate that Imam Ali (AS) conceptualizes the destination area using maps taken from everyday life that everyone can understand and uses various cognitive metaphors based on the audience's knowledge and understanding of the target concept.