A Study Of The Coherent Function Of Metaphors From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Through combining with the classification of coherence in Van Dijk’s theory of macrostructures, this thesis aims at studying the coherent function of metaphors in O.Henry’s short stories from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory. It has mainly adopted the qualitative method. And it has two research questions: 1) how is the sequential coherence constructed by the metaphorical systematicity and coherence in the metaphorical discourses picked from the data of thirty short stories of O.Henry?; 2) what role does the metaphorical coherence play in the formation of the theme of O.Henry’s short stories?During the past decades, domestic and foreign experts and scholars have conducted a great number of researches on discourse coherence from the perspectives of semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, cognition and so on, and they have also achieved fruitful research results. Among these studies, although a lot of scholars have studied the discourse coherent, cohesive, organizational and other functions of metaphors, most of them have merely focused on economic and political discourses, and few of them have carried out a systematic research on the discourse coherent function of metaphors in literary discourses, especially short stories.According to the above two research questions, at first, the author selects all metaphorical discourses from the data of thirty O.Henry’s short stories, which can be divided into discourses containing one metaphor, two metaphors and more than three metaphors on the basis of the quantity of metaphors involved in each metaphorical discourse. Then, in accordance with the similarities and differences in source domains or target domains between metaphors, the author classifies the discourses containing two metaphors into those involving metaphors with the same target domain, with the same source domain as well as with different source and target domains again. Next, in the process of analyzing the coherent function of metaphors in O.Henry’s short stories, through combining the conceptual metaphor theory with the categorization of coherence in Van Dijk’s theory of macro-structures, on the one hand, the author has mainly dissected how the metaphorical systematicity and coherence help to create the sequential coherence in the metaphorical discourses chosen from O.Henry’s short stories, that is, through the intra-systematicity and coherence(formed by the internal metaphorical entailments) within one metaphor, extra-systematicity and coherence(established by the relations between their metaphorical entailments) between metaphors with the same target domain or source domain, coherence(constituted by the relationships between their metaphorical entailments) between different metaphors, and complex coherence(formed by the overlapping of their respective goals) among metaphors; on the other hand, the author has explored the contribution of metaphorical coherence to the formation of the overall coherence in O.Henry’s short stories, that is to say, the role of metaphorical coherence in the development of the theme of O.Henry’s short stories. Through the analysis of the metaphorical discourses selected from the overall structures of some short stories, the author has found that the metaphors that seem to be isolated and irrelevant among themselves in these discourses actually play a great role in constructing the overall coherence of short stories by means of certain relationships among their respective goals, thus having a vital influence on the formation of their theme.Through many a case analysis, this study has found: 1) metaphors play an important role in the meaning construction and the realization of coherence in discourses; 2) to analyze novels from metaphors consisting in language itself provides us with a new way to the understanding of their theme.In addition, this study can help us comprehend the connotations of O.Henry’s short stories better, as well as improve our appreciation and insight of O.Henry’s works. At the same time, it can also make us have a quite comprehensive understanding of the coherent function of metaphors and expand the research scope of discourse analysis.