A Comparative Study of Female's Metaphorical Conceptualization in Kurdish and English Poetry

This research presents a comparative analysis of female conceptualization. It has applied the American school of comparative literature to investigate depictions of women in selected Kurdish and English poems. Drawing on poems from both Kurdish (Sorani and Kurmanji) and English, the study attempts to identify shared conceptual patterns like images of nature or symbols of home as well as highlighting culturally specific descriptions of femininity. Using Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the study revealed that both linguistic traditions contain ideological constructs of female identity, autonomy, and societal roles within their metaphorical frameworks. The analysis revealed five primary metaphorical portrayals of women: as angels, flowers, globes, plants, and animals.This shows how Kurdish poets like Goran and Sherko Bekas have deployed these metaphors to serve different rhetorical purposes. They evoke themes of plant resilience and cosmic vitality to define femininity, whereas Anglophone poets like Sylvia Plath and Carol Ann Duffy use similar motifs to critique the commodification and medicalization of the female body. The study has concluded that despite language and cultural differences, both literary traditions utilize metaphor as a powerful tool to shape and contest gendered meaning.