CULTURAL METAPHORS AND METONYMIES OF WEDDINGS IN PAKISTANI ANGLOPHONE POETRY: A CULTURAL LINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

This article examines the cultural conceptualization of weddings in Pakistani Anglophone poetry through the framework of Cultural Linguistics. It explores how Pakistani poets writing in English use metaphor and metonymy to represent a wedding not simply as a private union between two individuals but as a collective cultural event shaped by ritual, emotion, family honour, social status, gender roles, and economic exchange. The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach and draws particularly on the concepts of cultural schemas, cultural categories, cultural metaphors, cultural metonymies, and collective cultural cognition. The analysis focuses on selected poems by Taufiq Rafat, Moniza Alvi, Nadir Hussain, Rizwan Akhtar, Mona Hassan, and Hibba Memon. The findings show that weddings are conceptualized as journeys, performances, spectacles, feasts, marketplaces, transactions, social inspections, and negotiations. The poems also employ metonymies such as the caravan of cars, palanquin, hennaed hands, dholak, brass band, dowry items, drawing room, tea service, and matchmaker. These figurative patterns reveal that the wedding functions as a rich cultural schema in Pakistani Anglophone poetry. While the poets preserve familiar cultural meanings associated with celebration, hospitality, family ties, and ritual continuity, they also question social display, dowry, class judgment, the objectification of women, and the limited agency of brides. The study concludes that metaphor and metonymy serve as important linguistic and conceptual resources through which Pakistani poets represent, negotiate, and critique their cultural experience.