Metaphor within-Culture Variation Metaphors of “The Islamic Veil”, “Female’s Body” and “Cultural Integration” among the mainstream

Abstract

In this paper, a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in British culture has been done in order to test metaphor within-culture variation theory. In order to do so, the study has analyzed a set of data collected form British newspapers, which consists of 18 articles, 10 interviews and 34 comments all written or done by British women form both the mainstream British culture and the Islamic British subculture. Moreover, the work focuses on the variation of metaphorical structures used in conceptualizing the images of “the Islamic veil”, “female body” and “cultural integration” between these social varieties. The analysis shows that each social variety, in the selected data, understands the investigated images according to different embodied experiences.