The Study Of Lexical Metaphor In EST

The research on metaphor which has been regarded as a rhetoric phenomenon dates back to Aristotle and enjoys a long history. But with the development of multidisciplinary research, cognitive concept was introduced to the research of metaphor. Linguists Lakoff and Johnson develop the conceptual metaphor theory in Metaphors We Live By, where metaphor is the process of meaning mapping from the source domain to the target domain. Metaphor is not only a rhetoric phenomenon, but also a cognitive mechanism of human thought. According to the statistics, 70% of the lexical meanings originate from metaphor in language (Zhao Yanfang, 2001).So the traditional approach that metaphor as the figure of speech could not be used in scientific and technological discourse has lost its theoretical foundation. This provides new proof for us to do further research on metaphor in English of science and technology (EST). Metaphor of EST can be divided into two levels: lexical metaphor and grammar metaphor. Due to the limitation of the research, this thesis tries to study lexical metaphor in EST from a conceptual metaphorical point of view. Lexical metaphor has been the emphasis of research since Aristotle, but conceptual metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson embodies the total beginning of lexical metaphor research from cognitive perspective.The present thesis falls into six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. The author points out the purpose of writing, introduces some basic concepts, and defines the organization of this thesis. Chapter Two presents a literature review of researches on both metaphor and metaphor in EST. Generally speaking, there have already been a lot of lexical metaphor researches in EST in the west, some of which have linguistically achieved a lot. But such researches are insufficient in China. Many young researchers are influenced by the west trend and start the study on grammar metaphor by jumping over the systematic research on lexical metaphor. This is also the reason for the choice of this topic. Chapter Three discusses the forming ways and natures of lexical metaphor in EST. Metaphor of EST plays an important role in human society, but its nature has been a problem to many linguists and philosophers. Therefore, the nature is the key point for this chapter. Metaphors of EST include similarity-based metaphors and similarity-creative metaphors. The former builds up the association between scientific concepts and daily experiences and helps people achieve their cognition about scientific things and even about the whole world on the basis of some similarities. The latter reflects the process of human's more active cognition about new things. Chapter Four and Chapter Five are the highlight of the thesis. The front chapter analyses the features of metaphor in EST by comparison with those in literature style. The latter chapter analyzes the functions of lexical metaphor of EST in detail in aim of encouraging more scholars to be interested in the metaphor study and application in future. Based on what have been discussed above, Chapter Six is the conclusion of the thesis and points out some misleading research on metaphor and proposes suggestions for future work.