A cognitive linguistic study of UP and DOWN in Iraqi Arabic

الملخص EN

This study is an attempt to investigate the conceptual metaphor of UP and DOWN commonly used in Iraqi community.

Some of the metaphorical expressions in Iraqi colloquial Arabicarewidely used by Iraqi speakers in everyday language.

Ithas been analyzed by following the cognitive theory of metaphor (Lakoff& Johnson,1980).The study indicates that the Iraqi speakerexperiences more of the metaphorical expressions of UP and DOWN to referto many of the abstract concepts that shape his/her impression of everyday life situations.