The Metaphors of ‟God” in Orthodox Prayers

Abstract

"The Metaphors of God in Orthodox Prayers. In this paper we look at the conceptual metaphors of God that we encountered in a collection of Orthodox prayers. Prayers are a type of discourse genre belonging to liturgical sublanguage, which is described as conservatory and intangible. We aim at identifying the way in which religious imaginary is configured as part of the linguistic heritage. We do not only intend to analyse the mechanisms of the conceptualization of God in the discourse of devotions, but also to connect it to religious teachings and dogmas, to have a better understanding of the outlined imaginary. The concept of God is deeply rooted in prayers and is lexicalized into coherent and logical structures, interwoven into a pluralist perspective on divinity. Keywords: God, Cognitivism, conceptual metaphor, linguistic imaginary, Orthodox prayers "