Language Studies

Conceptual metaphor of tastes in childish poetry

Document Type : Research original ,Regular Article

Authors

asgar salahi 1
neda nabizade Ardabili 2

1 The Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Mohaghegh Ardabili University. (The corresponding Author).

2 Ph.D. in Persian Language and Literature, Mohaghegh Ardabili University.

https://doi.org/10.30465/ls.2025.26357.1780
Abstract
 Metaphor, which in the classical sense was a poetic tool for decorating the word, was introduced as the basis of thinking with the advent of cognitive linguistics.  In this view, abstract things are understood in the form of tangible things, which are called conceptual metaphors.  In this descriptive and analytic-descriptive study, the conceptual metaphor of infantile poetry was investigated in this study.  The results show that 51 cases of conceptual metaphor were used in the studied works, 38 of which were conceptualized with the help of "sweet" and 13 with "bitter" taste.  Areas of origin These metaphors are "sweet and bitter" and areas of destination are "the good or the bad feeling of different things".  Because 1. most metaphors are conceptualized by the children's favorite taste; 2. they are all ontological in accordance with children's view of the world; 3. with the most tangible evidence;  The poets have been successful in adapting their poetic atmosphere to the children's morals and have composed poetry in accordance with their childlike tastes.
 Keyword: Conceptual metaphor, Childish poems, Tastes, Sweet, Bitter.
Introduction
One of the areas whose trajectory of study was fundamentally transformed with the emergence of cognitive linguistics is metaphor. For many years, metaphor had been regarded as a poetic device serving the non-ordinary use of language; however, with the expansion of cognitive sciences, it came to be recognized as a tool for thinking and for understanding abstract and immaterial concepts. In this view, the mind comprehends abstract notions by reconstructing them in terms of concrete, material experiences. The present study seeks to examine the role of gustatory perceptions in the formation of conceptual metaphors in children’s literature. Since a child acquires much of their early information and experiences through the sense of taste, the percepts associated with this sense are inherently more tangible for them than those of other senses. With this in mind, the study aims to investigate how poets of children’s literature conceptualize abstract notions for their young audiences and to determine the extent to which they have succeeded in facilitating children’s comprehension of abstract ideas in accordance with their experiential world.
Method
This research employs a descriptive-analytical methodology. The corpus consists of thirty poetry books selected from among children’s poetic works. The poets represented include Ebrahimi, Khodadoust, Rahmandoust, Shabannejad, Shabani, Keshavarz, Kianoush, Lotfollah, Mazinani, Mohaqqeq, and Baktash, from whose works all conceptual metaphors related to the gustatory domain were extracted. The study addresses the following questions: (1) What are the principal source domains belonging to the gustatory field in children’s poetry? (2) How does the use of these source domains affect the conveyance of abstract concepts?

* The Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature, Mohaghegh Ardabili University. (The First Author).  asgarsalahi98@gmail.com

** Ph.D. in Persian Language and Literature, Mohaghegh Ardabili University. nedanabizade65@gmail.com
Receipt date: 17  ⁄  11  ⁄  2020
Accepted date: 26  ⁄  2  ⁄  2021
Discussion
This study centers on conceptual metaphors in children’s poetry, with particular emphasis on those grounded in the sense of taste. In Lakoff and Johnson’s view, conceptual metaphor provides a means of comprehending abstract concepts through concrete, embodied experience. Each conceptual metaphor comprises a source domain—material and perceptible—and a target domain—typically abstract and mental. The connection between the two is established through mapping. Based on established classifications, conceptual metaphors fall into three types: structural, orientational, and ontological. Structural metaphors supply a rich knowledge structure in the source for understanding the target; orientational metaphors conceptualize meaning through spatial orientations; and ontological metaphors reframe abstract concepts as concrete, existent entities.
Given the nature of children’s cognitive development, the sense of taste occupies a distinctive position in their early understanding, as it is active from the prenatal phase and remains significantly stronger in early childhood than in adulthood. Consequently, children experience gustatory stimuli in a direct and immediate manner. This makes flavors—particularly sweetness and bitterness—highly suitable source domains for metaphorical expression in children’s literature, since they play a major role in representing pleasant and unpleasant experiences from a child’s perspective.
The analysis of thirty collections of children’s poetry revealed approximately sixty-nine conceptual metaphors based on gustatory perception. Among these, forty-eight metaphors rely on sweetness to express pleasure, joy, and positive experiences. Because children typically describe pleasant tastes using the notion of sweetness, poets employ the adjective sweet to convey concepts such as a good day, laughter, a smile, a story, a dream, or a pleasant feeling. Conversely, twenty metaphors draw on bitterness to represent negative, distressing, or unpleasant experiences—such as sound, moment, news, memory, or admonition.
An examination of the target domains shows that roughly thirty metaphors involve immaterial concepts and approximately thirty-eight involve material ones. Although expressions such as “sweet sound” or “sweet story” appear to associate both domains with material experience, the true target is the emotion or pleasure generated by the phenomenon, rather than the phenomenon itself. Consequently, overarching metaphors such as “Pleasure is a sweet substance” and “Unpleasant experience is a bitter substance” underlie all examples.
From a typological standpoint, all identified metaphors belong to the category of ontological metaphors, as poets render abstract emotional experiences in terms of tangible material entities. Children cannot directly conceptualize emotions such as pleasure or discomfort; however, through simple experiential analogues—such as eating something sweet or tasting something bitter—they gain concrete equivalents for various emotional states. Poets thus draw on these fundamental sensory experiences to make the complex world of emotions intelligible to young readers.
Conclusion
This study analyzed conceptual metaphors with gustatory source domains in thirty collections of children’s poetry. The findings indicate that approximately sixty-eight conceptual metaphors rely on gustatory percepts, with sweetness (48 instances) and bitterness (20 instances) serving as primary sources for conveying desirable and undesirable concepts. Accordingly, poets, drawing on children’s predominantly sweetness-oriented taste preferences, use sweet to conceptualize positive notions and bitter to express negative ones. The target domains include both material and immaterial concepts, with the material targets predominantly associated with auditory, visual, and olfactory perceptions.
Given that (1) most metaphors employ sweetness—the flavor most favored by children; (2) all metaphors belong to the ontological type, aligning with children’s worldview; and (3) the conceptualizations are grounded in the most tangible sensory percepts—those of taste—it may be concluded that the poets studied successfully harmonized their poetic atmosphere with children’s sensibilities, producing poetry that is joyful, appealing to children, and consistent with the child’s experiential and perceptual framework.

Keywords

conceptual metaphor
childish poetry
tastes
sweet
bitter
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Language Studies
Volume 16, Issue 1
March 2025
Pages 171-201

  • Receive Date 18 November 2020
  • Revise Date 14 January 2021
  • Accept Date 26 February 2021

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