TIME AS A MOVING ENTITY in English and in Arabic: A Comparative Cognitive Analysis

Since the emergence of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (the CMT henceforth) in the 1980s, many studies have been carried out on conceptual metaphors. However, so far no single study has provided a systematic comparative analysis of time metaphors in English and in Arabic. The present paper aims at filling up this gap, at least partially, by conducting a comparative analysis of the conceptual metaphors for time in these unrelated languages. The current analysis is based on the theoretical framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory as proposed by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (1980), and Kövecses (2002). The purpose of the current research is to find out how the abstract concept of TIME is conceptualized in terms of a more concrete one, i.e. A MOVING ENTITY, in both languages.