A Study On Metaphors In The Big Bang Theory From The Cognitive Perspective

In recent years, the global American sitcoms are paid attention to by an increasingnumber of people. And some of them are professional English learners who often enjoythese American situational comedies (shorted as sitcoms) for English learning or doingresearch. Different scholars have drawn different conclusions from different angles andentry points, and these rich research achievements show a tendency of typicaldiversification. The Big Bang Theory is another popular sitcom in Europe and the U.S.after Friends, which has won several Emmy nominations and numerous awards. Itslanguage is quite humorous, and contains rich metaphors. The most of previous studiesare limited to the characteristics of their language, conversational implicature, irony,euphemisms and other related theories of humor under the context, with very few studiesinvolving metaphor. The research of cognitive metaphor is going deeper and deeper inrecent years, and has become the topic that both the domestic and foreign linguists arequite interested in. Among them, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and ConceptualIntegration Theory are two important theories in contemporary cognitive view ofmetaphor. These two theories reveal the operating mechanism of metaphor from differentangles. Therefore, this thesis will make a tentative analysis and discussion of themetaphors in the Big Bang Theory with Conceptual Metaphor Theory and ConceptualIntegration Theory as its theoretical framework, trying to make a better understanding ofthe cognitive process of metaphor.This thesis includes three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.Introduction outlines the study of metaphor at home and abroad, and gives a briefintroduction to the significance of the topic of this thesis.Body part consists of four chapters.Chapter One first makes a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the traditionalviews of metaphor represented by the Comparison Theory of Metaphor, the SubstitutionTheory and the Interaction Theory of Metaphor, and the contemporary views of metaphorrepresented by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theorythrough tracing back to the research history of metaphor both in China and the West. Italso points out that the process of Western study of metaphor is constantly developingand deepening, which is based on and beyond the previous studies. The domestic study of metaphor is almost limited to the basic framework of rhetoric level, and there is littlemetaphor research at the cognitive level.Chapter Two will firstly give a brief description of the corpus, that is, a briefoverview and analysis of the Big Bang Theory and its linguistic characteristics. We canfind a lot of metaphorical language in it. Then the author will introduce differentclassifications of metaphor given by different linguists, and point out the internalstructure of metaphor, i.e. metaphor is a cross-domain mapping. At last, the relationsbetween language, metaphor and cognition will be introduced in detail.Chapter Three will make a detailed analysis of the metaphors in the Big Bang Theorythrough specific examples, and point out its operation mechanism. As is noted above,different linguists place metaphor in different categories, and the author’s study will bebased on Lakoff’s classification on metaphor with the use of Conceptual MetaphorTheory to make an analysis of the structural metaphors, orientational metaphors andontological metaphors in the Big Bang Theory respectively. The idea of ConceptualMetaphor Theory is first put forward by Lakoff&Johnson. The core content of thetheory is that metaphor is a cognitive tool; the nature of metaphor is conceptual;metaphor is a systematical across-domain mapping; the use of conceptual metaphor issubconscious. In short, Conceptual Metaphor Theory holds that metaphor is asystematical mapping from a concrete conceptual domain to an abstract conceptualdomain; the concern of metaphor is thinking rather than language, i.e. metaphor is notonly a rhetorical device of language, but also it is used as a universal human cognitivemeans and way of thinking.Chapter Four, as well as Chapter Three, is the core chapter of this paper, whichanalyzes the integration process of metaphors in the Big Bang Theory, that is, with theConceptual Integrating Theory to analyze the cognitive mechanism of metaphor, andmake a comparative evaluation of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and ConceptualIntegration Theory. Conceptual Integration Theory is put forward by a group of Americanscholars with the head Fauconnier who suggests that “Conceptual Integration’’ actuallyrefers to the mental space synthesis, and mental space refers to a set of conceptual packetwhich is set up in order to achieve the goal of the local understanding and action whenpeople talk and think. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by Lakoff&Johnson holds that metaphor is the corresponding of the source domain and the target domain.And Fauconnier thinks that we constantly set up mental spaces when we think and talkand metaphor is a result of cross-mapping of mental space. Conceptual IntegrationTheory pays attention to the online generation and interpretation of the language meaning,and it is a dynamic study which has a stronger explanatory force to interpret metaphors.Conclusion mainly introduces the main findings, and points out the significance ofthis thesis. The application of the corpus in the Big Bang Theory further confirmsLakoff’s point of view: in our life, metaphors are everywhere. And it also proves thatConceptual Integration Theory, compared with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, has amightier explanatory force to analyze the meaning and the structure of metaphors, andthey are complementary to the interpretation of metaphors. This study aims at pointingout the cognitive mechanisms of metaphors by analyzing the metaphors in the Big BangTheory so as to have a better understanding of metaphorical meaning and language formin different cultures from the cognitive perspective, and to enrich the studies ofConceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory. This study has acertain practical significance for English language learning and teaching.