Farzad Sharifian: "Conceptualizations of chesm 'eye' in Persian" (2011)

From my perspective, this paper is mostly notable for bringing out the tight relationship between the Perisan sufism metaphors employing the eye as a source domain. This observation is parallel to the hypothesis that our conceptualizations of anger as a heated fluid have their roots in medieval medical scholarship.

Sharifian concludes that "there is a close interaction among language, body, and culture," and that "figurative meanings based on the body do not draw their power from the assumption that there is but one natural way in which we interact physically with our environment" (p. 197).

Further evidence that even the constraints theory of metaphor is wrong comes from inconsistent conceptualizations of the same domain. Examples are:

• DOWNHILL IS BAD vs. UPHILL IS BAD
• BAD IS NOT GOOD vs. BAD IS GOOD (in the sense of cool, impressive)
• In Danish, FAT IS IMPLAUSIBLE vs. THIN IS IMPLAUSIBLE
• IMPENETRABLE IS CONVINCING vs. TRANSPARENT IS INTELLIGIBLE