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The present paper aimed to comparatively study the orientational conceptual metaphors in Persian and Spanish. In this work, within the Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) classification of conceptual metaphors as structural, orientational and ontological metaphors, we have tried to the concentrate on the examination of orientational metahors applied to data collected from Spanish, and to prove the use of these metaphors at the level of metaphorical mapping as well as linguistic representation in Persian. The analysis of 38 samples of orientational conceptual metaphors in the form of 10 names of mapping extracted from the Spanish novel Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa, a collection of papers in Spanish about conceptual metaphors, and a series of oral data, made us conclude that the similarities related to conceptual metaphors based on the human understanding of the sense of “space” and “direction” are more than the disparities in these two languages.  

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‎ An orientational metaphor is a metaphor in which concepts are ‎spatially related to each other, as in the following ways: up or down, ‎in or out, front or back, on or off, deep or shallow, central or ‎peripheral. Such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They ‎originate from our physical and cultural experience. An orientational ‎metaphor organizes a group or system of metaphorical concepts in ‎terms associated with spatial orientation, for instance “up-down” and ‎‎“front-back”. An example would be the fact that many metaphorical ‎concepts concerning happiness (e.g. “feeling up”, “spirits were ‎boosted”, “in high spirits”) have to do with the spatial orientation of ‎‎“up”, whereas many metaphorical concepts of unhappiness (e.g. ‎‎“feeling low”, “feeling down”, “sinking spirits”, “falling into ‎depression”) have to do with “down”. These spatial orientational ‎metaphors are so common that we often use them unconsciously. ‎Those metaphors using the spatial orientation of “up”, “forward” and ‎‎“on” seem to be associated with positive feelings and events, while ‎terms such as “down” and “back” are associated with the ‎negative. The majority of spatial orientational metaphors employed in ‎the Qur’an can be divided into those that convey a positive experience ‎or feeling and those that express a negative or less satisfactory event ‎or emotion.‎

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The present research surveys orientational metaphors in Quran in a cognitive approach. Space and orientation in the space are basic cognitive domains employed as source domain for conceptual metaphors. The research aims to explore the target domain concepts formed based on the orientational concepts. Thus the “Noor software” was searched with seven orientation marking keywords. All the verses including these keywords were identified in Quran and 60 instances of metaphorical application of these items were recognized. Some of the most prominent abstract concepts formed through orientational metaphors in Quran are “degree and dignity; bliss; superiority and advantage” among others. Findings of the research show that the special application of orientational metaphors in Quran is a stylistic and semantic feature. 
Keywords: Quran؛ Conceptual metaphor؛ Orientational metaphor؛ Corpus