A Cognitive Analysis of Conceptual Metaphor in Ted Hughes’s Song and Nizar Qabbani’s Your Body is my Map

Abstract

This study is an investigation and analysis of conceptual metaphors in Ted Hughes’s and Nizar Qabbani’s poems within the theoretical framework of Lakoff and Johnson (2003), Kovecses (2020). The two poets are regarded as two of the most important poets of modern literature in the 20^th century. Hughes’s selected poem is (Song) and Qabbani’s poem is (Your body is my map) as they are chosen for their relation to the study's theme. The study is primarily conducted using descriptive research and documentary analysis, with a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the process of analysis, the researcher attempts to find out the metaphoric and metaphtonymic expressions of love and pain in the selected poems of both poets. Four levels are used in the analysis: image schema, which looks at the embodied and underlying structures of metaphors; domain level, which charts the relationship between the source and target domains; frame level, which places the metaphor in a larger cultural context; and mental space level, which looks into how the reader constructs love and pain through poetic imagery. The final section compares the levels of analysis based on the quantitative analysis and provides answers to the research questions of the study