A Cognitive Semantic Analysis of Arabic Verb of Visual Perception رأى (ra’a) in Fiction Writing

Abstract

This study focuses on whether the metaphors of visual perception are really as universal as has been argued in the literature as research in non-Western languages has demonstrated that the metaphors are not universal. Thus, this study aims at unraveling the conceptual metaphors underlying the linguistic expressions of the Arabic verb of visual perception ىأر (ra’a) in fiction writing. This study adopts a qualitative approach and is situated within the field of cognitive semantics. A corpus of Arabic fiction writing, comprising 1 million words, between the period of 2010 and 2017 was compiled from different sources. Specifically, a sample consisting of 1,000 examples of the Arabic verb of visual perception ىأر was randomly extracted from the corpus using Ghawwas_V4.6 concordancer. The metaphor identification procedures (MIPs) were used to identify the metaphorical linguistic expressions in the corpus, and Lakoff and Johnson’s and Sweetser’s analytical frameworks were adopted for data analysis. The data analysis revealed many conceptual metaphors of knowledge and understanding underlying the metaphorical linguistic expression of the verb ىأر in Arabic. The findings of this study support Sweetser’s claim regarding the universality of conceptual metaphors related to the verbs of visual perception in motivating metaphors of knowledge and intellection. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on verbs of perception, particularly verbs of visual perception, as it is the first to address the conceptual metaphors underlying the verb ىأر in Arabic using real authentic corpus of fiction writing.