A Cognitive Semantic Study of the Concept of Hell in English and Arabic Religious Texts

Abstract

Individuals utilize their mental capacities to conceptualize and figure out figurative language. Hell is one of the popular concepts that are relevant to the lives of humans. Until recently, metaphor was once thought of as a rhetorical device that was studied only in the fields of stylistics or rhetoric.  In this sense, the metaphor is formed based on an implicit comparison. With the emerging of Lakoff and Johnson's theory (1980),metaphors are the focus of cognitive linguistics. Conceptual metaphor theory (hereafter CMT) was employed to find out the conceptual metaphors of the data that related to the concept of Hell in the  holy Quran and glorious Bible. This research not only identifies the cognitive functions of metaphorical verses but also helps to comprehend the motivation behind utilizing these verses.