动物隐喻的认知研究_

Chapter 1 IntroductionAnimals play a vital role in the life of human beings. From a biological viewpoint, human beings are a genus of animals. Human beings and animals have a lot in common in terms of gene, physical features, actions, and behaviors, etc. Owing to frequent contact with animals, human beings create many animal words in their languages. Metaphor is pervasive in our everyday life, not only in language, but also in our thought and action. Traditionally or rhetorically, metaphor is regarded as a matter of language, whose typical form is “A is B”, and as an implicit comparison between a metaphorical expression and a literal paraphrase based on underlying analogy or similarity in order to achieve certain aesthetic effect. Take the example “Sam is a lion”, when Sam is compared to lion—brave, proud, ferocious, it is more vivid than the plain phrase “Sam is brave”. Here it is a metaphor not in a narrow linguistic sense, but in the sense of rich and complex cognitive models.According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), a metaphoric cognitive model is a way to structure the knowledge of one domain by mapping onto its concepts and the relations from an existing domain which people are already familiar with. Metaphor in this sense is not a mere linguistic device used only for the figurative embellishment of language, but also a fundamental way of learning and structuring conceptual systems. Furthermore, it is a part of everyday discourse. In my thesis I choose animals as my research target just because few researches have been done on animal metaphors from a cognitive perspective, and most papers regarding animals only explain some simple cultural phenomena from cultural perspectives. In my thesis I attempt to find how animal words are mapped onto human beings and other domains. While making a comparative study of animal metaphors in English and Chinese, I focus on a discussion of the possible reasons for the similarities and dissimilarities of animal metaphor in the two languages by making an exploration into cross-cultural metaphors on its cognitive basis and cultural variation.1.1 Objectives of this studyThe ultimate goal of the thesis is as follows: (1) to find out the similarities and differences of animal metaphors between Chinese and English cultures, in order to have a better understanding of animal metaphors; (2) to find out how animals are mapped onto other domains; (3) to find out the possible reasons of their similarities and differences of animal metaphors in Chinese and English via Chinese and English corpus.1.2 Significance of this studyWith the frequent contact with animals, more and more animal words have got their established connotations in all languages. Many animals have become a kind of symbolism in people’s thinking, and this symbolism is reflected in languages. However, because of different history and culture, the connotations of animal words in one language do not necessarily coincide with those in another. This thesis analyzes animal metaphors from cognitive and cultural perspectives. On the one hand, conceptual metaphor theory is applied to meaning analysis and meaning construction of animal words, which helps students acquire the polysemy of animal words. On the other hand, the study is an attempt to build a bridge of cross-cultural communication between the Chinese and English people.Chapter 2 Literature Review2.1 Metaphor study abroadUntil recently metaphor has arrested the attention of many linguists, philosophers, and sociologists. In tracing the development from a traditional to a cognitive conception of metaphor, we have to trace back to Aristotle who regards metaphor as “fancy language”used by poets, nice, but not necessary. His book The Poetics and Rhetoric covers many aspects of metaphor, including definition, mechanism and function. However, he appears to classify metaphors as lying outside normal language use. In The Poetics and Rhetoric, Aristotle holds that metaphor is a transference of meaning, “the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on the ground of analogy or proportion.” He interprets metaphor as the mechanism of renaming and transference that is later developed into “comparison theory”, which dominates the traditional study of metaphor. Aristotle’s idea of metaphor as a special kind of device to achieve stylistic effect and to be used in poetry only is somehow inherited and reinforced. Setting out from such a ‘substitution’or ‘comparison’ view of metaphor, I.A. Richards (1936) and Max Black (1962,1993) developed the so-called ‘interaction theory’of metaphor. They maintained that essence of metaphor lies in an interaction between a metaphorical expression and the context in which it is used. Though Richards is the first one who puts forwards the interaction theory, he fails to elaborate how the interaction goes on in metaphor and what the results of interaction are. Richards’s theory was inherited and developed by Black. Both of them maintained that essence of metaphor lies in an interaction between a metaphorical expression and the context in which it is used.At the end of the 1970’s Lakoff and Johnson published Metaphors We Live By, which is the beginning of the transformation of metaphor. The new view of metaphor challenged all these aspects of the powerful traditional theory in a coherent and systematic way. In their book, they explain metaphor as follows:。