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چکیده
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Cognitive linguistics believes that the structure of human mind is metaphorical or more exactly; human being conceives abstract concepts with regard to more concrete concepts. Therefore, our body- as the first available concrete domain- together with our social, cultural and geographical environment - have significant role in our metaphorical conceptualization. Following this rationale, animals also have played a remarkable role in the metaphorical formation of our cognition because they also live in the environment we do. By adopting Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this study tries to find out to what extend Kurdish and English language is similar or differs from each other in terms of using animal metaphors in their daily expressions. In order to answer the research questions, a predominantly source-domainoriented study was designed to investigate the Kurdish and English sayings, proverbs and slangs containing animal metaphors. After scanning almost 450 Kurdish and English idiomatic and proverbial expressions about animal metaphors, 15 animals were chosen for final investigation in both languages. In order to answer the research questions, the gathered data were analyzed from descriptive perspective. The descriptive analysis of data in terms of type, frequency and makeup of use of animal names in Kurdish and English proverbs can show both variation and similarity among the languages, and some points about culture-specificity and similarity between both languages at both conceptual and cultural level have been clarified. In sum, the results of the study hold up the importance of cultural and geographical environment and how both languages used the animals metaphorically in order to conceptualize human and other domains of experience.
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