On George Lakoff's Conceptual Metaphor

Metaphor was initially understood as a kind of language rhetoric.In recent years,more and more philosophers,cognitive scientists and linguists have realized that metaphor is ubiquitous in human cognition,and even it can be said that it is an important thinking mode in human cognition.Lakoff's thoughts on metaphor systematically represent such a new understanding of metaphor.Therefore,it is of great theoretical significance to systemize and study Lakoff's conceptual metaphor.This paper makes an in-depth study of Lakoff's conceptual metaphor thoughts from the following aspects: the origin of the conceptual metaphor,the basic nature of the conceptual metaphor,the reconstruction of the category of the conceptual metaphor,the truth review of the conceptual metaphor,and the embodied philosophical implication of the conceptual metaphor.The first chapter mainly discusses the ideological source and theoretical basis of conceptual metaphor,and discusses the inheritance,criticism and creation of conceptual metaphor to the study of traditional Western metaphor.Lakoff's conceptual metaphor and the formation of his theoretical thought have absorbed the essence of western traditional metaphorical theory and absorbed the beneficial results of his theories.He revisited the shortcomings of the core theories and questioned the blind spots of different schools.The main theories of traditional Western metaphor research have experienced the theories of substitution,comparison,interaction,innovation and conduit metaphor.The nature or function of metaphor has been considered as rhetoric,interaction,meaning transmission,and gradually developed into or related to human thinking.In the 1980 s,Lakoff and Johnson put forward conceptual metaphor for the first time.They believed that metaphor is the basis of the formation of human language conceptual system.Metaphor directly participates in human cognitive process and is the basic way of human existence.This has raised people's understanding of metaphor to a new height,and formally brought metaphor into the new field of cognitive science.The second chapter demonstrates the basic nature of conceptual metaphor,including its connotation,characteristics,working mechanism and classification evolution.Conceptual metaphor is a kind of knowledge activity of the formation and operation of metaphorical conceptual system,and also an activity of people's cognitive thinking.Conceptual metaphor shows the characteristics of being systematic,coherent and embodied.The special working mechanism of conceptual metaphor includes metaphorical mapping,image schema and neural mechanism of embodied mind.Conceptual metaphor is initially divided into three categories: orientational metaphor,ontological metaphor and structural metaphor.This classification comes from Lakoff's understanding of the interaction between human beings and the natural environment and the external world,which reflects the special emphasis of conceptual metaphor on "human experience".Although the early classification of conceptual metaphor has a profound influence,there are some unilateral and unsystematic problems in different categories,such as overlapping content,fuzzy classification level and so on.In the later stage of classification,Lakoff has made further amendments and improvements to it.He divides conceptual metaphor into primary metaphor and complex metaphor,and explains and interprets the acquisition process and reasoning mechanism of conceptual metaphor more comprehensively.The third chapter introduces the most abundant,mature and influential category and categorization research achievement of Lakoff's conceptual metaphor.Category research plays an important role in the theoretical extension and philosophical exploration of conceptual metaphor,which is the focus of this paper.Classical category theory holds that category is objective,fixed,rigid and irrelevant.Lakoff thinks that category and categorization process are related to human beings,which is embodied and dynamic,which makes the objectivity and fixity of traditional category be dispelled,and makes category research become boundary fuzziness.The theory of category construction is an important part of conceptual metaphor.This paper describes the structural pattern of radial category,analyzes the operational principles of people's categorization process,language structure mechanism,cognitive model,etc.,and highlights the philosophical significance of conceptual metaphor category reconstruction,which challenges the basic philosophical presupposition of objectivism and opens up the path of experiential realism.Chapter four analyzes Lakoff's exploration of truth,which originated from conceptual metaphor.This paper holds that Lakoff's cognitive view is a process of thinking based on the formation of conceptual metaphor theory and the reconstruction of category.Lakoff criticized the truth view of pure objectivism and subjectivism,and formed another ideological construction independent of objectivism and subjectivism,that is,the novel empirical truth view.It can be seen from the discussion of the essence of the truth on the macro level and the truth on the micro level.This view of truth is a kind of constructive view of truth based on conceptual metaphor,which fully shows its ideological and theoretical essence,that is,the two both depend on human understanding.At the same time,the thesis holds that there are also theoretical deficiencies in this view of truth,which is manifested in the contextual limitations of conceptual metaphor.The fifth chapter discusses the proposition of Lakoff's embodied philosophy and its implication of conceptual metaphor.This paper deeply analyzes the cognitive scientific basis of Lakoff's embodied philosophy,and summarizes the connotation of embodied philosophy.Embodied philosophy is based on experience,which is intended to be different from transcendental philosophy.Embodied philosophy mainly answers three key questions: what is human nature,what is evolution and what is embodied mind.Compared with the western traditional philosophy,embodied philosophy is a kind of positive and reliable philosophy,which can promote the effective communication and mutual enrichment of philosophy and cognitive science,and provide a referential path for the development of mind philosophy.Through the systematic carding,explanation and analysis of the rise,development and influence of Lakoff's conceptual metaphor,this paper attempts to make these original and open ideas present under the premise of understanding the basic nature of conceptual metaphor,the research of category reconstruction,the construction of truth view and the internal relationship between embodied philosophy,which originated from conceptual metaphor.It shows a kind of overall context and framework.To some extent,it promotes a more comprehensive and systematic understanding of Lakoff's conceptual metaphor.It is undeniable that conceptual metaphor theory has established a new historical direction in the process of metaphor research.With a unique embodied perspective,conceptual metaphor directly refers to the essential connection between human perception,thinking,language and action,and the cognitive scientific concept and basic philosophical issues from mind and reason.It breaks through the shackles of western traditional metaphor thought and philosophical theory,and opens up the research field of the second generation of cognitive scientific theory and practice.Based on the great discoveries of cognitive unconsciousness,embodied mind and metaphorical thinking formed by conceptual metaphor thought,this paper constructs a unique embodied philosophy thought,endows metaphor with different academic research value and practical application value,and provides a theoretical source for the continuous innovation and development of conceptual metaphor.