"To the Life of Your Child!": Conceptualizations of Oath in a Persian Film From the Cultural Linguistics Perspective

The present study aims at exploring the cultural conceptualizations of oaths in Persian as reflected in an Iranian film, called Qasam 'Oath'; a film whose theme centers on oath-taking, and its characters frequently take conversational oaths in various scenes. Analysis of the dialogues and visuals of the selected film utilizing the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations revealed 3 different conceptual layers of oath-taking. The first layer, that is, 'worldview' seems to be the fundamental building block to construct the second layer, namely 'cultural conceptualizations' of oath-taking, including GOD As WITEss, sACED IDIVIsUALs AD TExTs, FAMILY, and WOME As IFEIO GEDE in both oath referrals and conditions. At the third layer, these conceptualizations are encoded linguistically in the dialogues and visuals of the film. It can be concluded that the analytical framework of cultural conceptualizations enables researchers to trace cultural schematization, metaphorization, and categorization hidden in films produced in particular cultures.