“Man of Life”: A Cultural-Linguistic Investigation of the Concept of ‘Manhood’ in the Persian Language

نویسندگان
1 Department of Foreign Languages, Gonbad Kavous University
2 University of Zabol
چکیده
To shed further light on Iranian cultural cognition, an investigation was conducted into conceptualizations of ‘manhood’ among Iranian speakers of Persian. To this end, a total of 127 Persian male and female speakers from various ethnic and age groups in Iran were asked to complete a vignette question form that included five naturally occurring situations, for which the most probable concept(s) related to the action of the male character were provided by the participants. Additionally, interviews were conducted with the participants to triangulate the data and uncover the underlying worldviews. The data were then analyzed using MAXQDA, following a grounded-theory-driven approach and the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations. The findings revealed that despite the participants’ diverse ethnic backgrounds, homogeneous and interrelated cultural schemas (i.e., ENDURING LIFE DIFFICULTIES, SUPPORTER, QEIRAT, and EMOTION CONTROL) and cultural metaphors (i.e., MAN AS A BACKREST, MAN AS A MOUNTAIN, MAN AS A SPINE OF A BODY, and MAN AS A WALLET) of manhood were referred to, all of which reflect a unified cultural category (i.e., MAN OF LIFE). It is argued that Cultural Linguistics can be utilized to unravel the unique cultural cognition of masculinity in the Iranian context.

کلیدواژه‌ها

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