Representation of Image Schemas in “Bijan and Manijeh” Story of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh: A Cognitive Approach

Mojahedi Rezaeian, Setareh; Pahlavannezhad, Mohammad Reza

doi:10.22054/ltr.2024.78514.3817

Representation of Image Schemas in “Bijan and Manijeh” Story of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh: A Cognitive Approach

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

¹ PhD Candidate in Cognitive Science-Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

² Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran

10.22054/ltr.2024.78514.3817

Abstract

Image schemas are mental representations that emerge the main patterns for understanding conceptual relations. Human beings represent image schemas based on the interaction between their bodily conditions and status and the external world. Then, they share these image schemas with society and their audiences. Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh is an excellent, mythical, and heroic work in Persian literature that conveys and reifies the cultural, social, and, human valuable concepts and effects on using image schemas in conceptualization. There are various characters in Shahnameh, each indicating a symbol of different features of human beings. Among the effective stories in Shahnameh, “Bijan and Manijeh story” with the events can be a representation, conceptualization, and schematicity of human life concepts. Cognitive linguists believe language has a metaphorical nature and image schemas play an important role in the formation of conceptual metaphors. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate the representation of different types of image schemas, including path schema, containment schema, and force schema, following Johnson’s (1987) model in “Bijan and Manijeh story” of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The results revealed that there was a significant difference (p<0.05) between the representation of image schemas in “Bijan and Manijeh story” of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. In particular, the most important finding is that path schema is the dominant image schema in this story which represents the concept of movement and dynamic in life.

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