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Abstract

Studies on body parts are pervasive in many languages and cultures. The current research selects for study metaphors and metonymies in Saudi Arabic (SA), and compares them to their Tunisian Arabic (TA) counterparts (Maalej, 2014). The objective of the study is to test whether SA and TA as belonging to the same Arab-Islamic civilization, show the same metaphors and metonymies. To do so, data for SA are collected from various sources by the researcher while data for TA were available in Maalej (2014). The framework is a combined one, consisting of the Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) as developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) and the Cognitive Theory of Metonymy (CTM) as developed by Radden & Kövecses (2007), together with two views of cognition: embodied cognition (Gibbs, Lima, & Francozo, 2004; Foglia, & Wilson, 2013) and cultural cognition (Sharifian, 2011). Results show that, in conformity with Maalej’s (2014) claim about the marked use of metonymy more with character traits and cultural values than the mental faculty, metonymy is embodied and more frequent than metaphor. Results also show that although these two dialects of Arabic belong in the same Arab-Islamic culture, they show major differences in making changes to the head in sense-making. These outcomes, together with other results arrived at by Zibin et al (2024), point to the fact that in some Arab-Islamic sub-cultures language and embodiment seem to be under pressure and overridden by cultural cognition.

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2025-09-15
2026-05-11

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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: cultural cognition ; metaphor ; personal attributes ; cultural values ; embodied metonymy ; mental faculty

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