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Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 16. Number 2, June 2025, Pp.57--79
Department of English, Faculty of Arty of Kufa, Najaf, Iraqts, Universi
Department of English, College of Basic Education, University of Kufa, Najaf, Iraq
This study investigates the postcolonial metaphoric symbolism that appears in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by employing cognitive-semantic theoretical analysis. Through symbolic acts, the book shows how colonial power systems and resistance provide their encoding by using conceptual metaphors together with image schemas. The first research questions focus on how cognitive-semantic models describe postcolonial symbolic actions and how those methods work when analyzing Heart of Darkness. The research adapts cognitive semantics and postcolonial theory as its methodological base to evaluate political, cultural and social symbolic acts through Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Image Schema Theory. Social symbolic acts prevail throughout the text as the novel focuses on the dehumanization experienced by colonized subjects and imperial oppression alongside political and cultural symbolic acts that use structured and ontological metaphors to maintain imperial narratives. The research enhances postcolonial literary analysis through cognitive-semantic methods, which explain colonial discourse symbols better. Studies should investigate how cognitive semantics applies to multiple postcolonial literary works to better investigate the relations between language and power structures and ideological forces.
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Dr. Hasan Abu-Krooz is an Assistant Professor of Pragmatics at the University of Kufa, College of Basic Education, Department of English. He earned an MA in English language and linguistics with a focus on Pragmatics in 2013 and received his Ph.D. in Pragmatics in 2018 with excellent grades from Babylon University. He has published 25 papers and has authored or co-authored 7 books in various fields of linguistics, including Pragmatics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics, Translation, and Rhetorical Pragmatics. Additionally, he has participated in 10 local and international conferences .ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8357-4461
Athraa Al-Fatlawi is a postgraduate student in the research phase at the Department of English Language, Faculty of Arts, University of Kufa. Her research focuses on linguistic studies, with particular emphasis on cognitive semantics.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8543-9190