From Military Concept to Sports Concept: Conceptual Metaphors in Russian Football Texts and Their Persian Equivalents

A conceptual metaphor is one of the main tools for understanding the surrounding world and plays an important role in the process of conceptualization and classification of structures of human knowledge. It functions as a cognitive-linguistic mechanism that establishes connections between heterogeneous conceptual domains. Conceptual metaphors are widely used in sports news and reports.

Although the study of conceptual metaphors in sports texts has attracted the attention of many researchers, comparative studies aimed at identifying similarities and differences in their use in Russian and Persian languages have not yet been conducted. One of the most common types of conceptual metaphors in sports is the military metaphor. Therefore, in this study, we focus on the analysis of military Russian conceptual metaphors in the context of football as a team sport, as well as on examining their equivalents in the Persian language.

The material for this study consists of 50 examples selected from contemporary Russian sports media and the proposed Persian equivalents have likewise been selected based on expressions commonly used in sports discourse. The examples are analyzed within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory developed by A. P. Chudnov. Each group of metaphors is viewed as a separate conceptual frame reflecting the transfer of elements from military discourse into the sports context.