A Cognitive Interpretation Of Xie Houyu's Image Metaphor

Image metaphor indicates that people make use of one image to describe another image on the basis of their similar features but few studies investigate it.Chinese Xiehouyu is a special language and it is full of images.Previous studies mainly focus on the semantic metaphor and phonetic metaphor in Xiehouyu and neglect the image metaphors in Xiehouyu.The present study defines the Xiehouyu bearing image metaphor as a conceptual metaphor where Xiehouyu’s image presented by a noun phrase corresponds to another image by virtue of the similarity between two images.Based on the definition,the present study gathers 723 Xiehouyu bearing image metaphors from The Dictionary of Xiehouyu written by Yang Ning.The present study aims to analyze the semantic features of image metaphors implied in Xiehouyu from different types of images in the target domain and reveal the cognitive mechanism of image metaphors implied in Xiehouyu from metaphoric mapping on the basis of CBT that supplied by metaphor and metonymy.The present study reaches the following conclusions:On the one hand,the present study finds that the goal of image metaphors implied in Xiehouyu is to describe and explain the image in the target domain.Therefore,the semantic features of image metaphors relate to different types of images in the target domain.The present study combines “Great Chain Theory” and image metaphor to discover that there are four types of images in the target domain,that is human image,animal’s image,plant’s image and inanimate image.Image metaphors whose target domain are human images represent people’s specific personality,behavior style,appearance and capacity.Besides,image metaphors in which animal images are the target domain show animals’ distinctive behavior style and appearance.In addition,image metaphors that include plants in the target domain display plants’ particular appearance.Furthermore,image metaphors represent the static state,dynamic state and appearance of inanimate objects.On the other hand,the present study finds four types of image metaphors implied in Xiehouyu from the metaphoric view.Four types of image metaphors have different cognitive mechanisms.The first pattern of image metaphors indicates that the image similarity and relativity lie between Xiehouyu’s image and context-based image,which is directly shown by the same meaning of Xiehouyu’s latter part.Its cognitive mechanism refers that Xiehouyu’s image and context-based image integrate and produce the context-based meaning of Xiehouyu,the meaning of context and the emotional meaning of context-based image with the help of metaphor,metonymy and background knowledge.The second pattern indicates those whose similarity lies between the Xiehouyu’s image and the context-based image,which is interpreted by the semantic pun of the Xiehouyu’s latter part.The cognitive mechanism of the second pattern is that Xiehouyu’s image and context-based image integrate on the basis of metaphor,metonymy,background knowledge and semantic pun.There are two image metaphors in the third pattern.The first image metaphor corresponds to human image and Xiehouyu’s image on the basis of similar features.The second image metaphor maps Xiehouyu’s image and the context-image according to similar features.Both features are shown by the same meaning of Xiehouyu’s latter part.There are two aspects in cognitive interpretation of the third pattern image metaphor.The first aspect integrates and combines the human image and Xiehouyu’s image with the help of metaphor,metonymy and background knowledge.The cognitive process is conventionalized in the pattern of Xiehouyu.Then,the second aspect fuses Xiehouyu’s image and the context-based image on the basis of two cognitive tools and background knowledge.The fourth pattern also concludes two image metaphors.The first image metaphor refers to an image metaphor whose similarity and relativity lie between the human and Xiehouyu’s image.The second image metaphor indicates an image metaphor in which Xiehouyu’s image corresponds to the context-based image on the basis of the similarity of image.However,both similarities are indicated by the semantic pun of the Xiehouyu’s latter part.There are also two aspects in the fourth pattern.Human image and Xiehouyu’s image are combined in the first aspect with the help of semantic pun,metaphor,metonymy and background knowledge,which is conventionalized as Xiehouyu.The second aspect creates the context-based meaning of Xiehouyu,the meaning of context and emotional meaning of context-based image according to combination of Xiehouyu’s image and context-based image on the basis of semantic pun,metaphor,metonymy and background knowledge.