Universal Metaphors through a Cultural and Gendered Lens in Pakistan

Abstract

This paper examines gender differences in terms of conceptualizing abstract cultural notions like success, failure and love among others in a similar cultural background.  The study derives its concept of systematic domain mapping proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, and Sharifian model of shared cultural cognition, to suggest that the male and female speakers have differences in the salience of metaphorical source domains that are used to organize important experiential targets . The data have been collected by using a structured questionnaire comprising 14 metaphorical statements.  The respondents are 25 male and 25 female aged between 20 - 25 from Sargodha.  Each statement realizes the underlying conceptual metaphor without citing the use of figurative language. Quantitative analysis shows the fact that both groups draw on the same shared toolkit of cultural metaphors, yet they differ in the salience they assign to specific source domains. The results indicate that gender is a sub-cultural variable that determines priorities taken by individuals in metaphors not depending on whether they are aware of them. The paper substantiates the research on metaphor with empirical findings that prove diversity at the intra-cultural level. It informs how individuals use conceptual metaphor in discourse reflecting the patterned variation in metaphorical conceptualization by culturally driven gendered schemas.