Cultural Metaphors of Animals in Persian Culture, Literature, and Myths

Animals and expressions using animals play an important part in colloquialisms and cultural references. The analytical tools of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, Cultural conceptualisations and language: theoretical framework and applications. John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2011; Sharifian, Cultural linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2017) further elaborate this phenomenon. This chapter examines the cultural metaphors of animal expressions in Persian culture, literature, and myths. These conceptualizations form the basis for many commonly used expressions in contemporary Persian and are fundamental to the Iranian folk in their lives, faith, and extended culture. The research data was drawn from four main sources: questionnaires, focused-group interviews, literary works, and online resources. The data validates that animals function as the main conceptual basis for many conceptualizations and metaphors in Persian culture, literature, and myths. The findings demonstrate that sociocultural factors such as religion, history, and literature have a significant role in shaping various animal conceptualizations in the Persian language.