Discourse Functions Of Metaphor

Metaphor had traditionally been considered merely an elegant rhetorical device or even a linguistic quirk. Nonetheless, the year 1980 witnessed a cognitive turn in metaphorology with the landmark publication of Lakoff and Johnson's works, Metaphors We Live By. Since then, metaphor is no longer taken just as a matter of language but a kind of thought. It is a cognitive mechanism and helps to construct a conceptual world with its own principles.Cognitive linguistics has broadened the scopes of metaphor study. So far, previous research on metaphor has been successfully done at its rhetorical, lexical and syntactical levels in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary way. Yet, it seems that the study of metaphor at discourse level has been neglected by most of the scholars in a comparatively long period of time.Until very recently, especially in the past three years, increasing attention has been paid to exploring the role of metaphor at the discourse level. However, there still seem to be rare systematic studies that integrate insights from both traditional theories and cognitive theory with discourse analytic procedures to explore its discourse functions at different levels of written discourse, especially literary discourse. In this case, the present thesis will mainly focus on this point, which is based on both Lakoff and John's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Integration Network Model (CINM), which is considered to be one of the latest extensions of Fauconnier and Turner's Blending Theory (BT).This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to some basic issues concerning metaphor and metaphor study, the rationale for studying metaphor at discourse level, the purpose of the present study as well as a general outline of this thesis.Chapter 2 presents an overview of the previous research on metaphor interpretation in the tradition of rhetorical, semantic, pragmatic and cognitive approaches.Chapter 3 focuses on metaphor classification and processing, which serves as the theoretical basis for the analysis of metaphor at discourse level. The present study pays more attention to metaphor classification before going to the three aspects involved in metaphor processing, that is identification, conceptualization and functionalization. It is assumed that identification of metaphor at the surface level is usually classification-oriented. In this case, classification of metaphor, especially at the rhetorical level, lays out a workable framework for metaphor identification.Chapter 4, the core of this thesis, investigates the discourse functions of metaphor from the perspective of discourse analysis. It proposes five functions of metaphor at discourse level supported by analyzing different genres of discourse, especially literary discourse. Apart from its cohesive and coherent functions, other three functions are put forward based on a hybrid of theories, namely discourse analysis, CMT and BT. There is no denying the fact that framing effect of metaphor at macrostructure level contributes a lot to coherence at the deep as well as macrostructure level of discourse. For this reason, it is discussed as an independent function in a separate section. As for the discourse-organizing function, it is assumed to be a synthesis and extension of the first three functions and the reason why it is illustrated separately lies in the fact that metaphor can organize a discourse in a hierarchical way by topicalization. In the end, the ideological function of metaphor is examined and it is assumed that iconographic references can help to realize this unique function of metaphor.Chapter 5 presents a summary and conclusion of the previous chapters. It also points out the limitations of the present study and offers some suggestions for future study.