Conceptual integration and metaphor in Hanif Kureishi’s “Four Blue Chairs”
Conceptual integration and metaphor in Hanif Kureishi’s “Four Blue Chairs”

Summary/Abstract: The present paper constitutes a continuation of my preoccupation with the study of metaphor in the recent cognitive and neuro-scientific view and also a continuation of my exploration of the migrant metaphor in postcolonial writing. The short story analysed is called Four Blue Chairs and belongs to the British postcolonial writer Hanif Kureishi. The interesting thing for me is that although the story itself contains no immediately recognizable facts and references to do with the migrant concept, the echoes of the anxieties of Kureishi’s typical migrant heroes are still clearly articulated in the visual and image schema metaphors employed which embody the conundrums of this story’s male character. Consequently, the present study focuses on these image schemas and visual metaphors that circumscribe the narrative. It is attempted as another modest acknowledgement of the explanatory power of the Conceptual Metaphor theory, Cognitive Poetics and other recent relevant cognitive approaches.

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