Metaphorical conceptualization of ‘captivity’ in the novel I am alive

The imposed war over Iran has been considered as one of the most important events in contemporary era which has evidently impacted multiple fields including culture, literature and art. One way to carry a better understanding over the various dimensions of war and its events and consequences is to study the memories of the war. The purpose of the current research is to examine the metaphorical conceptualization of ‘captivity’ in the book I am alive to find out how a teenage girl who was held captive by the “Ba'athist” regime in Iraq for 4 years, express her experiences. The analysis has been done within source domains to conceptualize the harsh conditions of herself and other prisoners, as well as the violent and inhumane behavior and action of prison guards. The most frequently used source domain in conceptual domain of ‘animals’ reflected in metaphors “prison is a cage”, “captive is a bird” and “Iraqi prison guards are wild/inferior animals”. The domain of “nature” has been used in the metaphor “captivity is a dangerous natural phenomenon”. Many other domains such as plants, banquet, exam, mission, the Karbala incident, war, sport and death have also been used in metaphors.
Introduction:
The imposed war on Iran is one of the most prominent events in contemporary era of Iran which has evidently impacted multiple fields including culture, literature and art. One way to carry a better understanding over the various dimensions of war and its events and consequences is to study the memories of the war. The study of the novels and poems related to the “Holy Defense” period, which are parts of the resistant literature, could help studying these works more accurately and deeply and to understand the meanings and themes hidden in them based on the new perspectives of linguistics and especially the approach of cognitive linguistics. The purpose of the present research within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987, 1993) is to examine the metaphorical conceptualization of “captivity” in the book I am alive to find out how a teenage girl who was held captive by the “Ba'athist” regime in Iraq for 4 years, expresses her experiences. Conceptual Metaphor Theory, unlike the traditional view, considers metaphor not only as one of the literary devices, but also as a cognitive and conceptual mechanism that plays a central role in the cognitive system, as well as in the processes of human understanding and thought.
One of the topics that has received attention from researchers in the literature related to the imposed, war which lasted for eight years, is the use of metaphors in conceptualizing issues and events related to the war that has been reflected in prose texts (novels and stories) and poetry. Oliyaei (2011) has examined the reflection of war in the memoirs of Iranian women based on the theory of conceptual metaphor and concluded that female writers have focused more on spiritual and emotional issues in their memoirs of the war, and there is no significant difference between men and women with respect to their presence in war. Faragerdi et al. (2018) investigated the animal-based metaphors in twenty fictional books about the “Holy Defense”. The findings of this study indicate that the conceptual domain of animals is one of the most profitable domains of metaphoric source and plays a pivotal role in conceptualizations related to the Holy Defense. In the novels examined in the current study, the source domain of animals is mainly used to refer to enemy forces and to conceptualize their inhumane behavior and actions. In addition to novels, the poems of the Holy Defense have also been studied based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Marof (2016) has examined the metaphors related to the concepts of martyrdom in the poems related to the Holy Defense era. According to the results of this study, the source domains of flight, path, wine, galaxy, birth, place, and life have been the most common conceptual metaphor domains for expressing the concept of martyrdom.
Methodology:
In terms of methodology, the research is a corpus-based research in which the data are extracted from the text of the book I am alive (Abad, 2013). In order to identify the conceptual metaphors and their source domains, linguistic metaphors in the text must be first identified and analyzed and, then, their underlying conceptual metaphors must be extracted and examined. Therefore, the entire text of the book was entirely read, and all linguistic expressions that metaphorically conveyed the concept of death or martyrdom were identified. These linguistic expressions, referred to as linguistic metaphors (Kövecses, 2010), were then classified and analyzed based on their source domains.
Results and Discussion:
The analysis of linguistic metaphors used to express the concept of captivity in the book "I Am Alive" (Abad, 2014) shows that the author has resorted to metaphors so as to depict the harsh and difficult conditions of himself and other prisoners in the prisons and camps of Iraq, as well as the violent and inhumane behavior of Iraqi prison guards and forces. The author has employed multiple conceptual metaphors to represent the notion of captivity, drawing from various conceptual domains. The identified Conceptual metaphors comprise: "Prison is a cage"; "Prisoner is a bird"; "Iraqi prison guards/officials are wild animals"; "Captivity is a dangerous natural phenomenon"; "Prisoner is a flower"; "Captivity is a feast"; "Captivity is a test"; "Captivity is a mission"; "Captivity is war"; "Captivity is like being in Karbala"; "Captivity is a sports competition"; "Captivity is death"; "Captivity is a burden"; "Captivity is pain".
Conclusion:
According to the results, the conceptual domain of “animals” is referred to as the most frequently used source domain which has been used to express the harsh conditions of prison (such as the metaphors "prison is a cage" and "the prisoner is a bird"), and to conceptualize the behaviors of Iraqi prison guards towards prisoners (as manifested in the general metaphor "Iraqi prison guards/officials are low/wild animals"). The natural phenomena have also been relatively noticeable in conceptualizing captivity, with the author using dangerous natural phenomena such as fire, sea, and storm to metaphorically conceptualize the dangers and sufferings of the period of captivity as "captivity is a dangerous natural phenomenon". In addition to these widely used conceptual domains, the author has also made metaphorical use of other conceptual domains such as plants, feast, trial, mission, the event of Karbala, war, sports, death, burden, and pain.