A Critical Analysis of Yemeni War Metaphors in News Headlines of World Newspapers based on Conceptual Blending Theory (BT) and Hart Model: A Cross-language Study

This study provides a cognitive-critical analysis of the use of metaphorical expressions in the headlines of the Yemeni war in the Persian-language newspaper Kayhan, Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat and the English-language newspaper New York Times. To do this, news items related to the Yemeni war published from January 2016 to May 2020 were collected from Kayhan, Al-Hayat and the New York Times by searching the websites of the three newspapers. Metaphorical applications in these headlines were identified using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the identified metaphorical expressions were categorized by language and conceptual domain. Using the Conceptual Blending Theory (BT), the abstract form of each of the conceptual domains was projected on the conceptual blending networks, so that the emergent structures of these networks, formed in the blended space, could form an abstract discourse for critical analysis of speech (Hart Model). It was found that there is no common emergent structure between the metaphorical discourse of the three newspapers. Nevertheless, the concepts of “the ruinous war” and “the scary war” is common between Kayhan and the New York Times, and the concept of “solution” is common between Kayah and Al-Hayat. Also, the emergent structure of "variability" is common between Al-Hayat and the New York Times. These similarities and differences indicate that the specific ideological perspective of each of the newspapers is reflected in the metaphorical structures of the news headlines related to Yemeni war.