A Study On Conceptual Metaphor From The Perspective Of Discourse Coherence

Traditionally, metaphor is taken as a way of rhetoric, and the study of it is limitedinto the levels words, phrases, and sentences. The republication of Metaphors We LiveBy by Lakoff and Johnson in the1980s signals the transference of metaphor studyfrom the linguistic level to cognitive level. They two hold that metaphor means a wayof thinking, and people know about the world on the basis of conceptual metaphor.With the development of the research, more and more scholars begin to studymetaphor from the level of discourse. However, only a few of the researches focus onthe discourse coherence function of metaphor. Metaphor is a way of rhetoric, a way ofcognition as well as a way of constructing the coherence of discourse. Thisdissertation attempts to study how conceptual metaphor contribute to the constructionof text coherence by using one of the achievements of cognitive linguistics-conceptualmetaphor theoryThe thesis starts its analysis with the types of metaphor coherence by Lakoff andJohnson to discuss how metaphor helps to construct the discourse coherence. Throughanalyzing the sample texts chosen, we come to the conclusion that as a thinkingpattern and a cognitive tool, conceptual metaphor can construct the coherence of text:firstly conceptual metaphors underlying a text form a coherent relationship based ontheir overlapping entailment, then the metaphorical expressions deriving from theseconceptual metaphors are coherent based on the coherence of conceptual metaphors,and finally the text is coherent based on these coherent metaphorical expressions...