Text As The Human Body:A Study Of Body Metaphor In The Part Of Creation Of Wenxin Diaolong

In recent years,studies on ancient Chinese classics from the perspective of cognitive linguistics attract more and more attention in academic circles.Although modern studies on Wenxin Diaolong have developed for more than a hundred years,few people have explored the conceptual metaphorical thinking behind the text itself of Wenxin Diaolong from a linguistic perspective.In the part of creation of Wenxin Diaolong,Liu Xie makes use of a large number of expressions related to the human body to illustrate his idea of literature,which shows the conceptual metaphorical thinking of text as the human body.Under the guidance of Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor,the present study analyzes body metaphor in the creation theory of Wenxin Diaolong comprehensively and systematically,attempting to answer the following questions:1.What are the factors involved in the concept of “human body” in the creation theory of Wenxin Diaolong?2.What is the metaphorical mapping relationship between “text” and “human body”in Liu Xie’s conceptual metaphor of text as the human body?3.What is the basis for the metaphorical mapping relationship between “text” and“human body”?In the course of concrete research,based on a close reading of the text,this study combines Zhou Zhenfu’s Wenxin Diaolong(1986),Yang Guobin’s Dragon-Carving and the Literary Mind(2003)and Feng Chuntian’s General Explanations on Wenxin Diaolong(1990)to extract and count expressions about the human body in the creation theory of Wenxin Diaolong.And then,it uses the metaphor identification process proposed by the Pragglejaz Group to identify,analyze and elaborate metaphorically used expressions related to the human body,mainly finding that:1.The concept of “human body” in Liu Xie’s conceptual metaphorical thinking of text as the human body is a generalized idea,including not only the human body(the human body as a whole and its characteristics)and its components(physical organs and abstract spirits),but also human activities closely related to the human body(productive activities and recreational activities).Liu Xie uses the human body,the components of the human body(the physical body organs and the abstract spiritual components)and human activities closely related to the human body to illustrate his literary theory,which forms a systematic conceptual metaphor of text as the human body.2.Liu Xie’s conceptual metaphorical thinking,text as the human body,projects the body,physical organs and abstract spirits of the human body onto genre,language and thoughts of literary works,which forms a systematic literary theory.In addition,Liu Xie’s conceptual metaphorical thinking includes not only the metaphorical mapping relationship between the source domain(human body)and the target domain(text),but also involves people’s understanding and interpretation of the more abstract and complex concepts in literature based on their experience of the human body,its components,and human activities related to it.3.The application of Liu Xie’s conceptual metaphorical thinking of text as the human body is similarity-based metaphors.The similarity includes three aspects: the similarity of position,the similarity of function and the similarity of characteristics.Through a systematic and detailed analysis of the body metaphor in the part of creation of Wenxin Diaolong,the present study arrives at some findings which would not be possible if the researcher only concentrated on this classic from the traditional rhetorical approach to metaphor.And it reacquaints the traditional Chinese literary theory from a new perspective.In addition,by applying a western theory to this Chinese classic,the study can,in some way,promote Chinese-western cultural communication,which is conducive to the further dissemination of traditional Chinese theories.