On the Persian Food-Related Metaphorical Conceptualization of Emotional Temperaments: A Study of Islamic Doctrines

Due to its centrality to human life, food and eating practices are naturally rich with metaphorization. The manner temperaments manifested with the semantic domain of eating and food in a certain culture can be understood through a discussion of dietetic and culinary concepts of a particular culture. What people in a society and culture eat or like to eat may become an evaluation of their emotional temperaments and therefore an implication for portrayal of their specific cultural models and traditions. Calling into question the strong claims of 'embodiment' as an underlying motivation for emerging specific metaphorical concepts by Lakoffian Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study is an evaluation on the Persian metaphorical source domain of FOOD within temperamental emotional states, emotional traits, and emotional qualities of ANGER and SADNESS. As the findings reveal, most representative examples of corpus data go beyond human pre-conceptual experiences of embodiment. The metaphoric extensions are motivated by embodied physiological experiences, as well as em-minded cultural orientations, which have influential roles in Persian conceptualizations of food-related metaphors. The close investigation of these metaphorical uses manifests that temperamental metaphorical concepts highlight many vestiges of humoralism and Avicenna‟s Iranian Traditional Medicine Theory derived mainly from Islamic philosophy, suggesting that the cultural models of ethno-medical tradition have left their traces deeply in the Persians‟ belief systems, the effects therefore, have been extended into Persian metaphoric language and cognitive conceptualizations.

کلیدواژه ها:

embodiment ، emotional temperament ، humoralism ، metaphorical conceptualization