A Cross-Cultural Account of the Metaphor Conceptualisations of Thought as Food in Persian

The eating experience, being vitally essential for the survival of human beings, can be extended to convey other conceptually abstract experiences. As a cognitive-semantic account of metaphor conceptualisations, this study aims to investigate the relationship between food-related metaphorical concepts and Persian cultural cognition and cultural models, as well as how they influence the targeted speakers’ beliefs and ideas. Following the orientation of experientialists’ views (Lakoff Johnson, 1980, 1999) and most discussions of metaphorical concepts since then within the cognitive linguistics movement, this study in particular explores the commonalities and variations in ontological metaphor conceptualisations of thought/ideas as food in a cross-cultural comparative study of English and Persian. The metaphoric extensions of food and cognition in Persian, to a great extent, are mediated and motivated by embodied experiences; as well as socio-cultural orientation, Iranian traditional medicine and the spiritual tradition of Sufism as it is shown through the marginal role the Persian language plays a role in the rational-irrational dichotomy.