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Contrastive Analysis of “Dog” Expressions in English and Persian



Author(s)

Azam Estaji, Nakhavaly Fakhteh

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2011.04.003

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

This study is based on corpora of animal expressions in English and Persian. In this study, “dog” expressions are examined based on Hsieh’s (2006) approach of semantic molecules to explore the salient meanings and the cultural backgrounds. Animal expressions may reveal people’s thoughts, emotions, cultures and customs. The analysis of about 10,000 English and Persian proverbs shows that there are 97 English and 207 Persian “dog” expressions. In spite of cultural and social differences between English and Persian, the salient semantic properties derived from the name of this animal are nearly the same. The main semantic molecules of the word “dog” are “worthless, bad-tempered, cruel, violent” in both English and Persian.

proverbs, animal metaphors, semantic molecules, animal expressions, salient content