Compliance Analysis "Dream Of Red Mansions" Metaphorical Discourse

A Dream of Red Mansions is an significant piece of Chinese literary treasure, with the use of a large number of metaphors. Metaphor is an important tool in verbal communication and is indispensable to our daily life. In communication, the successful use of metaphors also to some extent reflects the speaker’s and the hearer’s cognitive, social, and cultural convergence, which conform to the communication of both sides; otherwise the metaphor is difficult to understand, not to mention successful communication. The adaptation theory is proposed by a Belgian pragmatist Verschueren according to Darwin’s theory of evolution into a successful attempt in the field of linguistics. Pragmatics is no longer limited to the study of some traditional topics; instead the adaptation theory focuses on the use of language being the of their choices of language by users. The study of language use should take into consideration the social, cognitive and cultural factors. Therefore, the pragmatic study becomes comprehensive study of four perspectives. Specifically, they include contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability, and the salience of the adaptation process. Those four research perspectives as research focuses on the study of pragmatic use of language is a complete organism. This dissertation is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction part, which mainly describes the background and significance of the topic, and the previous research on metaphor. The author also presents the significance and the innovation of this dissertation. The second chapter uses the related theory of pragmatics to analyze different pragmatic functions in A Dream of Red Mansions and the metaphors in discourse. The third chapter, with A Dream of Red Mansions(the first eighty chapters) as a corpus, excluding the metaphor in poetry, intends to find out the discourse metaphors in the dialogues, by through pragmatic application of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory to the different contexts. The context is essential to understanding metaphors. The context includes three factors: the social world, the physical world, and the human mental world. In order for the two parties in an communication event to understand an metaphorical utterance, conforming to the three contexts is essentoal. The fourth chapter analyzes the metaphorical discourse in A Dream of Red Mansions from the perspective of culture. A Dream of Red Mansions, as the encyclopedia of a feudal society, uses metaphorical discourse to conform to the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, restricted by the traditional feudal social culture. The last chapter is the conclusion part. Through analysis and research, we can better understand the literary masterpiece of A Dream of Red Mansions. Meanwhile people are able to understand metaphorical utterances better so as to use them more effectively in communication.