A Functional Approach To Poetic Metaphor And Its Cognitive Motivation

Metaphor is omnipresent, crossing the time and the space. It is not only a rhetorical phenomenon for purpose of decoration, but rather a basic mode of thinking. It is a cognitive phenomenon in nature. Poems, the crystallization of human wisdom, often bring us unexpected ambiance and expressing effect by virtue of various metaphors. Poetry is widely accepted as "heaven of metaphors". And a metaphor is a "poem in miniature", which constitutes the essence of poetry. So the study of poetic metaphors is an indispensable part of metaphor study.This thesis begins with a brief retrospect on the development of metaphor theories along the line pragmatic-semantic-cognitive. The basic ideas of each are presented and among them, the most favored and the relatively more recent one is Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), which provides also a model of operating mechanism for the producing of metaphors, especially applicable to novel metaphors such as poetic metaphors which are the study objects of this thesis.Two main points are to be clarified in this thesis. One is the the function analysis of poetic metaphors from the perspective of Halliday's functionalism. Different from the traditional classification of metaphorical functions as rhetoric, semantic, pragmatic, cognitive, and so forth, the thesis claims that metaphor's contribution to the poetry is just the embodiment of three metafunctions of language, namely, ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. What is noteworthy is that the functional analysis doesn't stop on this superficial level. According to the emphasis of each metafunction, they are set within different theoretical framework and are elaborated on in detail. Particular tangent points, such as 'semantic extension' for the unification of ideational function, poetic metaphor and cognitive semantics; or 'aesthetic function' as the basis for unification of interpersonal function, poetic metaphor and cognitive pragmatics; and 'cohesion/coherence system' being the common concern of textual function, cognitive discourse analysis and poetic function of metaphor, are carefully chosen so as to spread the thesis smoothly. Besides strong theoretical support from these branches of linguistics, illustrative example analyses are also the eye-catching characters of this thesis. Famous poetic lines by great Western poets such as Shakespeare, Shelly, Robert Frost, Whitman, and Eliot areanalyzed intensively so as to provide persuasive support for the claims here. Chapter Two to Four cover this point at large.Another point to be focused on is the cognitive motivation analysis of poetic metaphor. Most of the researches on metaphor interpretation pay attention to the solution process on the part of the receptors. It is not the same with this thesis. Chapter Five further probes into this acknowledged cognitive phenomenon from both sides: the producer's angle and the receptor's angle. The previously mentioned four-space model of metaphor in CBT is discussed at length and it is applied to examples in tracing their composing train of thought. On the other hand, as to the interpretation of metaphors, a quite new theoretical fruit, a combination of syntax, semantics, computational science and cognitive science, has been introduced. It is Hobb's Interpretation as Abduciton, the inference to the best interpretation, which claims to backchain from the observable evidence and general principles to attain inferred, underlying explanation. This approach is also extended to cover the problem of metaphor interpretation as an attempt by Hobbs. And two of his example analyses are presented for our better understanding: one is about the standard category metaphor; the other is about the creative metaphorical expression. Though there is not a poetic metaphor example available here, Hobb's theory indeed sheds some light on the interpretation of poetic metaphors on the receptors' part, assisted by assumptions obtained through much greater effort. This approach to interpretation not only makes assumptions but also proves from logical form...