“To the Life of Your Child!”: Conceptualizations of Oath in a Persian Film from the Cultural Linguistics Perspective

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities and Physical Education, Gonbad Kavous University, Gonbad-e-Kavous, Iran

2 English Language Teaching Department, Faculty of Education, Girne American University, Kyrenia, North Cyprus

Abstract

The present study aims at exploring the cultural conceptualizations of oaths in Persian as reflected in an Iranian film, called Qasam ‘Oath’; a film whose theme centers on oath-taking, and its characters frequently take conversational oaths in various scenes. Analysis of the dialogues and visuals of the selected film utilizing the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations revealed three different conceptual layers of oath-taking. The first layer, that is, ‘worldview’ seems to be the fundamental building block to construct the second layer, namely ‘cultural conceptualizations’ of oath-taking, including ɢᴏᴅ ᴀs ᴡɪᴛɴᴇss, sᴀᴄʀᴇᴅ ɪɴᴅɪᴠɪsᴜᴀʟs ᴀɴᴅ ᴛᴇxᴛs, ғᴀᴍɪʟʏ, and ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ ᴀs ɪɴғᴇʀɪᴏʀ ɢᴇɴᴅᴇʀ in both oath referrals and conditions. At the third layer, these conceptualizations are encoded linguistically in the dialogues and visuals of the film. It can be concluded that the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations enables researchers to trace cultural schematization, metaphorization, and categorization hidden in films produced in particular cultures.

Keywords

Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 20 August 2024

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