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Cognitive semantic study of concepts of life and death in Ghani Khan’s poetry
Abstract
Previous literature either penned down the philosophical and mystic attributes of Ghani Khan’s poetry, or the literary qualities of his poetry, but perhaps no study has undertaken cognitive linguistic analysis of his poetry. The present paper attempts to carry out cognitive semantic study of the concepts of life and death in Ghani Khan’s poetry from cognitive linguistic perspective. Conceptual metaphor theory will be used to analyze the poetic language of Ghani Khan’s Kulyat in order to find out the conceptual schemas, which are used in description of life and death in his poetry. This theory holds that everyday language as well as poetic language is generated, processed and comprehended by the conceptual metaphors in human conceptual system.The analysis shows that Ghani Khan has used ten (10) key conceptual metaphors in description of life and death with slight cultural deviations in nine poems on the titles of life and death. This paper has also found that since Ghani Khan has used the key conceptual metaphor of LIFE IS A DAY, he has also used LIFE IS TWO DAYS drawing upon the conceptualization of life in Pukhtun culture. This paper finds that the figurative language in Ghani Khan’s poetry is based on the conceptual metaphors, and it recommends further research on Pashto everyday language and poetry from cognitive-linguistic and cognitive-semantic perspectives in order to validate the various tenets of conceptual metaphor theory through cross-cultural research.
... However, recently, efforts have been made to investigate Pashto language from modern linguistics perspectives (e.g. Khan et al., 2020;Kainat & Sardaraz, 2020;Khan & Ahmad, 2017;Pischurnikova, 2017;Sardaraz & Kainat, in press;Sardaraz & Nusrat, 2019. ...
... No doubt, literature identifies CMs in different languages, but its application is very scarce to Pakistani indigenous languages. CMT has been recently introduced to Pashto everyday language to investigate the CMs for life by Khan and Ahmad (2017) and for life and death by Sardaraz and Nusrat (2019). These studies found that the major source domains for life are journey, container, person, food, music, burden, gamble, dream and a day/a year and for death, departure, person and autumn. ...
... The data reveals that this schema is mostly used in Pashto poetry for visualization of the abstract concept of time, as is the case with examples with (20), (59) and (65) besides the idiomatic language and everyday language. Thus, this paper also supports the findings of previous research that time and events have been given human attributes across the languages (Lakoff & Turner, 1989, Sardaraz & Ali, 2016Sardaraz & Nusrat, 2019. ...
Past studies have investigated metaphoric correlations between time and space or objects from cognitive semantic perspective in different languages, drawing interesting similarities and cultural differences in the conceptualization of time. This paper departs from the existing literature by examining the concept of time in Pashto language from a cognitive semantic perspective based on the theoretical model of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (hereafter CMT) to find out various conceptual metaphors (hereafter CM) for time in Pashto language and poetry. Linguistic data of 150 sentences and clauses were extracted from the Pashto-English dictionary (Zeeya, 2009), Da Ghani Kulyat (Ghani 1985), Dewan Abdur Rahman Baba (Rahman, 1947), Tsraagh (Saqib, 2019) and everyday language on the basis of topical words and phrases conveying the concept of time. The topical words and phrases technique was used to retrieve the clauses or sentences denoting the concept/theme of time. CMT was used to analyze the clauses and sentences to investigate the source domains which structure the abstract concept of time in Pashto. Eight metaphors for the representation of time emerge from the analysis: i) time is object in motion; ii) time is a thing; iii) time is bounded space; iv) moments of time are landmarks in space and past is in the front, while future is at the back; v) time is person; vi) Time is measurable quantity; vii) time is a valuable commodity; and viii) time passing is tasting it. Contrary to English, Pashto speakers locate past time in the front while locating the future at the back. The present paper recommends further studies in Pashto language from cognitive semantic perspective to examine the tenets of CMT in Indo-Iranian languages to investigate its cross-cultural implications .
... CMT has recently been applied to Pashto language and poetry in order to investigate various conceptual metaphors used by Pashto speaking community and Pashto poets. Khan and Ahmad has investigated the conceptualization of life in Pashto language; Pischurnikova (2017) has deciphered LOVE IS WAR metaphor in poetry of Abdul Hamid; and Sardaraz and Nusrat (2019) has investigated Ghani Khan's poems on title of Life and Death to find out the conceptual schemas used for the abstract concepts of life and death. But landay, being anonymous, with no restriction of place, person and time, offers a field for analysis of conceptual metaphors, which will orient us about the general outlook of the Pashtun community. ...
... Investigation of the conceptual metaphor themes will help in understanding of Pashtuns' world view, nature of figurative language in landay and classification of landay from cognitive linguistic perspective. This paper may also kindle more interest in Pashto figurative language, particularly metaphor, as recommended by Khan and Ahmad (2017), Pischurnikova (2017) and Sardaraz and Nusrat (2019). ...
... Some of the conceptual metaphors used by the Pashtuns, as the analysis revealed, are LOVE IS JOURNEY, LOVE IS WAR, LOVE IS FIRE, UNREQUITTED LOVE IS DISEASE, EMOTIONS ARE FORCES, EMOTIONS ARE OBJECTS, HEART IS CONTAINER, GREAT CHAIN OF BEING METAPHOR, GENERIC IS SPECIFIC METAPHOR, TIME IS OBJECT IN MOTION and TIME IS SPACE. These conceptual metaphors have also been found in previous literature (Lakoff, 1993;Lakoff & Johnson, 1980b;Pischurnikova, 2017;Sardaraz & Ali, 2017;Sardaraz & Nusrat, 2019) except LOVE IS FIRE and UNREQUITTED LOVE IS DISEASE. Moreover, the analysis reveals that 396 metaphors in 930 couplets which constitutes 42 percent of the collected data. ...
Previous literature has focused on the literary and socio-cultural aspects and attributes of Pashto landay, a two line poetic couplet. The available literature shows that linguistic approaches to the study of Pashto language and literature in general and the study of Pashto landay in particular, are minimal. This paper has used conceptual metaphor theory to discover the conceptual metaphors within Pashto landay. Nine hundred and thirty landay taken from Noorzi's book, "Pukhto landay Misre, tappe" have been analyzed. The analysis revealed eleven conceptual metaphors on the basis of their respective experiential source domains besides the resemblance based metaphors. Four examples of each conceptual metaphor were selected for linguistic analysis. The analysis revealed that experiential gestalts of, for example, a journey, war, fire, disease, containers and objects in space have all been used to conceptualize abstract concepts of love, emotions, time and events in Pashto landay. However, as this paper has analyzed only a small portion of landay, further studies of Pashto landay are needed to discover more conceptual metaphors, which may be helpful in understanding the cognitive schemas used by Pashto speakers for processing abstract concepts .
... The study is helpful in improving people's metaphorical awareness and in giving them better understanding and knowledge of the culture and in turn improving the language and communication skills of the people. Sardaraz and Nusrat (2019) explored Ghani Khan's poetry from cognitive linguistic perspective to find out the conceptual schemas used in the description of life and death in his poetry. They found that most of the conceptual metaphors in his poetry are similar to those in the English language. ...
Conceptual metaphors shape our perception and understanding of looking at the world. The cognitive linguistic approach to a narrative study provides necessary tools to explain the thinking pattern and the worldview of fictional characters. This study explores and analyzes the conceptual metaphors used by the main character in Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'The TellTale Heart'. Using the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), this study explores what precisely was going on in the narrator's mind and how all that resulted in the killing of the old man. In addition, those conceptual metaphors are then analyzed through cognitive linguistic lens.
... Spatial usage of the preposition " alā" in a strict geometric sense was classed together, while metaphorical lexical units were classified according to CMT (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980;Kövecses, 2002). CMT holds that metaphor is a crossdomain mapping in our conceptual system, wherein an abstract domain is structured in experiential gestalt as LIFE IS JOURNEY, given in Figure 2 (Sardaraz and Nusrat, 2019). ...
Traditional syntactic approaches do not offer a plausible explanation regarding the use of the Arabic preposition “alā” with abstract nouns or states. This article adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the semantic classification of the preposition “alā” in the Quran from a cognitive linguistic perspective. Conceptual metaphor theory (hereafter CMT) was employed to find out conceptual metaphors (hereafter CM) in the data retrieved from the Quran with the help of search Quran software. CMT holds that human sensorimotor neural structures help store spatial relationships, which are then used to map the abstract concepts in language and thought, and that prepositions are the products of human sensorimotor neural structures. This paper found nine key CM themes behind the usage of prepositions in the data. Contact and support schemas were at the heart of the literal and metaphorical use of the spatial preposition “alā” in the Quran. However, it was also found that language generation and comprehension involve the role of multimodal perceptual schemas and linguistic knowledge rather than the unilinear process of one CM. This paper suggests further research into spatial relations across languages to explore the cross-cultural implications of image schemas.
... The lexical phrases "turah shpa" (dark night) in (33), "sro zakhmono" (bloody wounds) in (34), "sughatona" (gifts) in (35) and the phrases "da gulab" (of rose) and "sro gulono pa shản" (like a red roses) in (36) The lexical units "tarkhe wratzy" (bitter days) in (37), "zhund shakary" (sweets of life) in (39) and "Da asmản stargy" (eyes of the sky) are conventional and lexicalized metaphors which are used in our everyday language. These conventional metaphors can be explained within the conceptual metaphor perspective as investigated by Sardaraz and Nusrat (2019). ...
Previous literature is laden with research on Browning’s dramatic monologues from various perspectives. This paper will compare Browning’s dramatic monologues with Derwesh Durrani’s poetry from socio-literary perspective. Literary theories of analogy and variation will be used to find out similarities and differences in their poetry. Two poems from each poet have been selected for analysis through close reading technique on the model of theories of variation and analogy. Stratified sampling technique was used for taking the representative sample from the data. The findings reveals that Darwesh’s poetry exhibits most of the dramatic features of Browning’s dramatic monologues, but his poetry is more poetic, while Browning’s poetry is more dramatic; Browning invigorates the past, Darwesh recreates the present. In addition, Browning’s poems deals with domestic issues like gender violence, love and marriage, Darwesh’s poetry deals with social issues and patriotism, and contrary to Browning, he stands for women’s rights and sensibilities. This paper suggests further studies purely from socio-cultural perspective of Darwesh’s dramatic monologues, which will contribute to the existing literature on dramatic monologues.
Pashto literature is full of mysticism, but the reflection of mystical elements presented by Ghani Khan in his poetry is unique and remarkable. He wrote many poems on some of the major theme of mysticism i.e. life, death, paradise, hell, reward, punishment, destiny, fate, nature, the existence of God, divine and human love, and all above beauty which remained the center piece of his poetry expression, feelings and thoughts. This article analyzes mystical elements of Ghani Khan’s poetry. His mysticism is unique from the other writers whereas the melody of morality that had controlled Pashto literature for a long period was abandoned by Ghani Khan in his poetry. He was a poet of beauty, love, nature and imagination. His humanistic feelings and expressions about certain sensitive issues of life, death, fate, heaven and hell have unique characteristics. From the severe realities of life, he tried to take shelter in the imaginary world while tried realists approach towards certain issues that made him a distinct poet in Pashto literature.
Khan Anbul Ghani Khan (1914-1996) was the son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Known as Bacha Khan (1890-1988) who was a political activist. Unlike his father and his brother, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Ghani Khan was a poet, painter, and sculptor par excellence. Although he is well known as a poet both nationally and internationally, very few people are aware that he was as great a painter and a sculptor, too. In this short paper, I try to present Ghani Khan as a multi-faceted personality neither whose paintings are 'dumb poetry' nor whose poems are 'blind paintings' (Richter & Wells, 2008-188). I have also included illustrations of some of his paintings and sculptures for the interest of the readers.
In previous literature, conceptual metaphor has been used as a comprehensive cognitive tool to explore systematic categorization of concepts in the Quran. Death metaphor themes have either been studied from rhetorical or conceptual perspectives, but metaphor interpretation needs both linguistic and conceptual knowledge. This paper will explore the function of both linguistic and conceptual knowledge in metaphor interpretation in the Quran. This paper has used the technique of key words and phrases for data collection and metaphor identification procedure (MIP) for metaphors identification. Thirteen conceptual metaphors were found in the data. The key conceptual metaphors were analyzed through the lexical concept cognitive model theory (hereafter LCCM) to find out the functions of linguistic and conceptual knowledge in metaphor interpretation. The findings reveal that conceptual metaphor gives only relational structure to the linguistic metaphoric expressions, whereas interpretation needs integration of both linguistic and conceptual knowledge. Conceptual simulation of metaphoric expressions is a multilinear process of multiple conceptual schemas and language. The findings also reveal that LCCM needs the tool of intertextuality for clash resolution of contexts in text interpretation. This paper holds that meaning construction depends upon multilinear processing of conceptual schemas and language. Furthermore, it asserts that the gap in LCCM may be resolved through the tool of intertextuality in metaphor comprehension. This study suggests further studies on relationship between conceptual schemas and lexical behaviour and an elaborate model for text interpretation, combining LCCM and intertextuality. Keywords: Cognitive model, cognitive semantics, conceptual metaphor, fusion, lexical concept Cite as: Sardaraz, K., & Ali, R. (2019). A cognitive-semantic approach to the interpretation of death metaphor themes in the Quran. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 2(4), 219-246. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol4iss2pp219-246
This paper, using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as theoretical framework attempts to identify, analyze and interpret Metaphors for life in Pashto language. It argues that since life is a very rich conceptual domain, therefore it has more than one conceptual mapping. It identifies eight conceptual metaphors for Life in Pashto speech community, and demonstrates through mapping and entailment that how the target domain life is understood through several source domains in the Pashto language and culture.
This paper is the study of Ghani Khan's poetry in the light of modernist framework. For this purpose three books of his poetic collection have been studied. It is interesting to see that Ghani Khan's poetry, in terms of diction and style, is marked by a number of modernist elements and parameters. Employment of verse libre, economy of expression and use of allusions are some of the hallmarks of his poetry. Some of his major thematic concerns are his mistrust of dogma and rejection of any sort of authority, in particular, his criticism of the persona of Maulvi whom he regards as a symbol of parochialism and conservatism. However, of all the modernist elements that make his work comparable with the work of other modernist and experimentalist writers of the twentieth century, fragmented narrative and use of scattered images are the two most important characteristics.
The existing literature has examined the preposition fī in the Quran from lexical syntactic perspective in strict spatio-geometric sense, but its abundant use with abstract concepts, emotions and states needs an elaborate approach to investigate its complex semantic functions. Therefore, this paper has taken a corpus based approach to investigate the functional semantic complexity of the preposition fī in the Quran from a cognitive perspective. The conceptual metaphor perspective holds that the sensorimotor neural structures define the use of spatial preposition in both spatio-geometric positions and abstract states. The linguistic data reveals that the container image schema is at work both in the literal and metaphoric use of spatial preposition fī. However, the preposition fī carries its own distinct semantic argument in each context and sometimes overrides the symmetry of container image schema. This paper recommends a broader perspective for a comprehensive analysis of spatial preposition fī and suggests further studies on its functional semantic complexity in the Quran.
Conceptual metaphor is the discursive linguistic strategy employed in the Holy Quran to imprint upon the human mind the Quranic worldview. This approach can better explain the abstract concepts of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran through cross domain mapping with human experiential concepts. Traditional exegetes and rhetoricians missed this phenomenon in the Holy Quran because of their preoccupation with rhetorical and theological aspects of death and resurrection. The existing cognitive semantic research has also paid little or no attention to the investigation of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the conceptual metaphor themes of death and resurrection in the Holy Quran. Data were retrieved from the Holy Quran on the basis of key words and phrases encapsulating the abstract concepts of death and resurrection. The analysis of data reveals various conceptual metaphor themes. It is also found that the data question the asymmetrical hypothesis of conceptual metaphor theory and its role as a sole model of metaphor interpretation. This study is part of the growing research on conceptual metaphor in the Holy Quran and is hoped to contribute to further research on the cognitive semantic analysis of the Holy Quran.
Keats and Ghani Khan hold a unique position in literature due to the contribution they have made to the poetry of Pashto and English languages respectively. This paper presents the comparative elements in the poetry of these poets. Both the romantic poets seem to share several similar thoughts in their poetry. Their love for Beauty and Nature, and their concern for the Eternal and Political turmoils are also manifested in their poetry. Escapism is the hallmark of these great poets and, on the wings of their imagination, they seek shelter in the imaginary world from the harsh realities of life, but it does not mean that they do not look at the world realistically. Despite the fact that they lived in two different centuries and that they dwelled in different countries with different cultures, they got so many things similar in their poetry.
This clear and lucid primer fills an important need by providing a comprehensive account of the many new developments in the study of metaphor over the last twenty years and their impact on our understanding of language, culture, and the mind. Beginning with Lakoff and Johnson's seminal work in Metaphors We Live By, Kövecses outlines the development of “the cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor” by explaining key ideas on metaphor. He also explores primary metaphor, metaphor systems, the “invariance principle,” mental-imagery experiments, the many-space blending theory, and the role of image schemas in metaphorical thought. He examines the applicability of these ideas to numerous related fields.
