A Study On The Conceptual Metaphors In The Commencement Speeches Of American Universities

The research of metaphor can be traced back to Airstotle and enjoys a long history of twothousand years. As far as the metaphor researchers concenred, there appeared five main differentmetaphors theories along the history. They are the Compairson Theory, the Substitution 「rheory，the Interaction Theory, the Cognitive Theory and the Cognitive Blend Theory. The author hereindicates that the cognitive theory―the conceptual metaphor theory is the theoretical frameworkand will make a detailed introduction to the theory.In1980， Lakoff and Johnson published their far-reaching book metaphors we live by. inwhich they referred that different from the traditional view, metaphor is not only a rhetorical toolbut more impotrantly, a crucial cognitive mechanism and thinking style. The appearance of thisbook symbolizes the beginning of modem cognitive metaphor, which helps metaphor escapefrom the traditional metaphor theory based on literature and rhetoric. Then LakotY put forwardthe conceptual metaphor theory.There have been so many researches about speeches with the employment of the conceptualmetaphor theory. However, there are few theses, which aim to study commencement speeches inAmerican universities given by famous people who are not politicians. The author hypothesizesthat there is something special in studying this kind of speeches.On the basis of this hypothesis, this thesis aims to apply the conceptual metaphor theory inanalyzing different conceptual metaphors appeared in these "Top Ten Commencement Speechesin American Universiti"es and their main functions.The research results indicate that: firstly, there appear three main conceptual metaphors inthese speeches: the journey metaphor, the building metaphor and the light metaphor. Besidesthese, there are also the time metaphor, the game metaphor and the human being metaphor.Secondly, the main functions of these conceptual metaphors ""are the Bridge Function, theMotivational Function, the Evaluation Function and the Function of Constructing Coherence.The results justify the general applicability and explanation strengths in larger scope. On theother, the main difference from the political speeches lies in that the main purpose of suchspeeches is to motivate students, while the main purpose of the political speeches is to convertth’e speech makers ideas, political stands and ideologies to the masses to persuade the masses tobegin or continue to support them. I hope this research will offer some reference and enlightenment for the ifeld of the Second Language Acquisition, speech and cross-culturalcommunication.