A Socio-dialectological Study to Revitalize Kurdish Culture: A Case Study on Kurdish Calendars based on Conceptual Metaphor

Aliakbari, Mohammad; Mohammadi, Khadijeh

doi:10.22034/jls.2024.141938.1145

A Socio-dialectological Study to Revitalize Kurdish Culture: A Case Study on Kurdish Calendars based on Conceptual Metaphor

نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی

نویسندگان

¹ Professor, English Language Department, Ilam University, Illam, Iran

² Assistant Professor, English Language Department, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran

10.22034/jls.2024.141938.1145

چکیده

In a multicultural and multilingual country like Iran, where minority languages have undergone a degree of assimilation into Persian, certain cultural aspects of these minority languages, such as the Kurdish calendar for Kurdish people, have been ignored. This descriptive study tends to revitalize the overlooked calendars of Central (Sorani) and Southern (Kalhori, Feyli, Laki) Kurdish dialects by investigating the conceptual metaphors utilized in these dialect-specific calendars. To do so, the calendars of these Kurdish dialects have been sourced from reliable references. Subsequently, the names of the Kurdish months are analyzed using Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor model. The findings reveal that these Kurdish calendars exhibit ontological, structural, and orientational metaphors that conceptualize abstract time as a concrete entity through "physical experiences," including rituals and road blockages; "natural events"; and "spatial orientation," represented by the vertical movement of Kurdish people and leaves as well as the horizontal displacement between the months.

کلیدواژه‌ها