A Metaphorical Analysis Of Female Worship In The Kam Epic Songs Of Kam Remote Ancestors

Rhetoric holds that metaphor is a trope and a tool to enhance the effect of language,while modern cognitive linguistics holds that metaphor is a cognitive mechanism in which people understand an abstract and unfamiliar object by comparing it to a more concrete and familiar one.It is a basic cognitive and thinking model of human beings.Therefore,cognitive metaphor study is devoted to revealing the deep cognitive patterns of language and explaining various cognitive behaviors through language.Myth is an important carrier of human culture and has a profound influence on the formation of national cultural psychology.The Kam’s epic Songs of Kam Remote Ancestors as a narrative ancient song of the Kam people covers the longest history of the Kam people and has the richest contents about the Kam’s ancestors.It reflects the belief and concepts of the Kam people in their early stages by exemplifying their life philosophy,moral concepts,cultural psychology,and emotional experience.The epic has a large number of descriptions of the woman ancestors of the Kam people and large number of metaphors of women as well,which reflects the unique position of women in the Kam culture.Previous studies on the epic are mostly done from the perspectives of ethnology and folklore,and focus on the interpretation of its contents and some main connotations.This study draws on the cognitive metaphor theory to investigate the metaphors of female Kam people with the purpose of uncovering the development and evolution of the Kam people’s woman worship consciousness in their history.Based on the theory of cognitive metaphor,this paper takes the Kam’s epic Songs of Kam Remote Ancestors as the corpus to identify and analyze the expressions of female metaphors by using MIP metaphor identifying method.The study finds that:(1)The whole epic contains 9 types of conceptual metaphors which are closely related to the theme of female worship.They are entity metaphor,birth and death metaphor,migration metaphor,war metaphor,status metaphor,cultural metaphor,unity metaphor,natural metaphor,and human civilization metaphor.(2)The analysis of woman metaphors in the epic shows that there is a decline of female worship in the Kam people’s modern history and another rising in more recent days.Although at the latter stage of the patriarchal society,metaphors such as female domination,female guidance and women salvation can still be observed but they appeared much less frequently.More contents focus mainly on men and men as leaders of the family.It shows that in the patriarchal society,women are less visible and has become the vassal of men to some degree.(3)It is found that the embodiment philosophy basis of the conceptual metaphor system is closely related to the daily life experiences of the Kam people.In turn,it shows the thinking mode of the Kam people.In addition,by constructing the conceptual metaphor system,the epic expresses the special culture of the Kam people,that is,the goddess Satianba is omnipotent,and she is the creator of the world.Exploring the met metaphorical expressions of women and the changes of female worship in the Kam’s epic Songs of Kam Remote Ancestors is helpful for us to understand the cultural connotation behind it and to preserve and transmit the cultural heritage of the Kam people at home and abroad.In addition,the analysis of the epic from the perspective of cognitive metaphor not only enriches the research content of cognitive metaphor,but also opens a new perspective for people to study,understand and appreciate the Kam epic and its culture.