学术报告语法隐喻

一．修辞中的隐喻和认知中的隐喻

Aristotle regarded metaphor as the transference of a word from

one thing to another.Metaphors We Live By written by Lakoff and

Johnson in 1980 marks the beginning of the cognitive study of

metaphor.---one concept is used metaphorically to present the

other according to the synthetic similarity of two things. Two

apparently irrelevant things are juxtaposed based on similarity

association and shared cognition for interpretation, evaluation

and expression.Metaphorization is a mapping of the structure of

a source model onto a target model. Hence metaphor means

metaphorical concept. The mechanism of conceptual metaphor is a

cross-domain mapping which preserves the cognitive typology of

the source domain in a way consistent with the structure of the

target domain.

认知语言学认为,隐喻是人类的基本认知方式,是人们谈论和思维抽象概念的认知工

具。Lakoff认为:“隐喻渗透于日常生活,不但渗透在语言里,也渗透在思维和活动

中。我们借以思维和行动的普通概念系统在本质上基本上是隐喻的”。这样的隐喻

被Lakoff 和Johnson 等称为概念隐喻。概念隐喻在英语中通常用大写字母表示, 如

LIFE IS A JOURNEY 和HAPPY IS UP。这里的LIFE 和HAPPY称为目标域( target

domain) ,JOURNEY 和UP 称为始发域(source domain) ,IS 被看作是“经验集的简

化,隐喻以它为基础,因此,这三者之间的关系就是建立在经验基础之上的由始发域

向目标域的映射。换言之,隐喻能使我们用较熟悉的、具体的概念去理解、思维和感

知抽象的、难以直接理解的概念,其方式就是把始发域的结构映射到目标域上,这样

的映射是在两个不同的认知域之间实现的,其基础就是经验。We are comparing

different ways o the same meaning.

Congruent expression and incongruent(metaphorical) expression

常规隐喻、死隐喻与新隐喻

Lakoff 所说的概念隐喻通常只指常规隐喻(conventional metaphors ) , 而不是死

隐喻( dead metaphors) 、新隐喻(novel metaphors) 。常规隐喻指那些建构我们

文化的普遍概念系统,并且反映在日常语言中的隐喻,它们才是我们真正赖以生存

的隐喻;死隐喻是指那些特有的、孤立的、无系统性的隐喻表达式,如山脚、葱头和

桌腿,它们虽是隐喻家族中的成员,但根本不与其他成员来往,更没有在我们的语言

和思维中被系统地使用(虽然有的临时可以被激活) ,因此,它们不是我们赖以生存

的隐喻。在隐喻研究中,区别常规隐喻与死隐喻具有重要的意义。

新隐喻具有和常规隐喻一样的系统特征,如果一个新隐喻进入了我们的日常概

念系统(有的也是一种必然趋势,正如胡壮麟先生(1997) 指出:“一代人的隐喻是另

一代人的常规表达”) ,即成为了概念隐喻,它就会改变我们原有的概念系统及行动方式。因而新隐喻可以创造新现实,而不是一种对业已存在的现实进行概念化的又一方式。所以Lakoff &Johnson(1980 :145) 说:“许多文化变迁归因于新隐喻概念的引进和旧隐喻概念的消亡”。并且,他们还举例说明,现在全世界范围的文化之所以西化,部分原因是由于“时间即金钱”这一概念隐喻的引进和推广。

二．语法隐喻

The notion of grammatical metaphor is proposed for the first time in Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar.The theory of grammatical metaphor inaugurates a new era of metaphor study and makes a breakthrough to the traditional views of metaphor which are still confined to lexical metaphor. Taking a sociocultural approach to language and meaning,Halliday contends that“a language is a system for making meanings.The term ‘semantics’does not simply refer to the meaning of words; it is the entire system of meanings of a language, expressed by grammar as well as by vocabulary.”and metaphorical variation is lexicogrammatical rather than simply lexical.He also identifies two main types of grammatical metaphors: “metaphors of mood(including modality)and metaphors of transitivity. In the terms of the model of semantic functions, these are, respectively, interpersonal metaphors and ideational metaphors.”(1994:343).Textual grammatical metaphor is excluded because Halliday deems that the textual is a meta-functional component in language to which there is no corresponding function in the sense of use.

隐喻是意义表达的“变异”，在隐喻表达中, 一个语法范畴表达两个( 或多个) 语义特征。系统功能语言学认为隐喻不仅限于词汇层面，而且常常发生在语法层面。在语气隐喻中, 语气隐喻体现为言语功能的复合体。例如: 陈述语气“I wonder if it is necessary”是陈述意义和疑问意义结合的结果; “Admit that you have not done anything about it”是陈述意义和命令意义结合的结果; 而“Can you tell me something about him ?”是疑问意义和命令意义结合的结果。

语法隐喻指的是以一个常见的形式表达事物却被以另一种语法形式表达出来。

同一语言过程可以有不同的表达方式。在这些表达方式中，除一种为适合表达（congruent wording）外，其余为隐喻表达。

韩礼德的语法隐喻包括概念隐喻和人际语法隐喻。其中人际语法隐喻又分为情态隐喻和语气隐喻。

Grammatical metaphor: the expression of a meaning through a

lexical-grammatical form which originally used to express a different meaning. Lexical metaphor can be seen as sub-category of grammatical metaphor.

1 概念隐喻

Ideational grammatical metaphors are the metaphorical expression of the meaning of a clause as representation through the transitivity system.