The Functioning of Metaphor in Moroccan Novelistic Production: The Novels of Abdel Rahim Jiran as a Case Study

Abstract

This article falls within the scope of studies that apply cognitive linguistic approaches to the analysis of narrative discourse. It offers a reading of Abderrahim Jiran’s novels Al-Hajar wa al-Birka (The Stone and the Pond) and Kurat al-Thalj (The Snowball), through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory as developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The central hypothesis of this study is that the novel is not merely a medium for recounting events, but rather a structure that reconfigures human experience through metaphorical frameworks which shape perception and construct representations of the self, the world, and social relations.

The analysis distinguishes between two types of metaphors: conventional metaphors, grounded in culturally shared conceptual patterns (such as orientational and ontological metaphors), and creative metaphors, which generate novel and unconventional mappings that open up unexpected possibilities for understanding experience. The study reveals that metaphorical structuring in both novels powerfully encodes deeper meanings related to identity, transformation, power, and human fragility.

Moreover, the analysis highlights the strong presence of conceptual depth in Jiran’s narrative practice, where metaphor becomes a tool for constructing a possible world governed by cognitive structures that transcend aesthetic function to embrace epistemological and interpretive roles. In this sense, Jiran’s novels function as a laboratory for meaning-making through language, with metaphor operating not as decorative rhetoric but as a vital medium for thought.