Conceptual Metaphor in Kumail Supplication

Abstract

This paper endeavors to explore how conceptual metaphor can influence the meaning of theology and moral ideology in Imam Ali’s Kumail supplication. Adopting the model of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the study analyses the systematic structure of abstract religious notions of divinity, sin, suffering, authority, and faith embodied, spatially, politically and materially by metaphors. Outcomes of the analysis reveal that Kumail supplication recurrently utilize the conceptualization of the divine attributes via the scheme of containment, force, light and sovereignty, making such abstract attributes cognitively available and experience based. Not only are these metaphorical arrangements accommodative to cognition, but they also carry an ideological role of naturalizing obedience, internalizing responsibility and redefining themselves as spiritual strength. As such, conceptual metaphor is a key organizing principle in the religious discourse of supplication incorporating thought, feeling, and ideology and providing a whole worldview where human life is placed within a comprehensive divine order.