An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Metaphor From A Multi-Dimensional Perspective

Early in the 20th century, an important shift in linguistic scholarship occurred, from research within language itself to paying greater attention to factors outside of language, factors nevertheless crucial to the wider understanding of this uniquely human activity. In other words, we study language so that we can understand the relations between language and human beings, and the relations between language and the external world.Metaphor as a common phenomenon in language has drawn a great deal of attention from scholars from ancient times until the present day. As language gradually developed, metaphor served as a kind of naming at first, largely inspired by observations of and interactions with nature. It not only gave an object a name, but also served to project properties from within the human psyche upon the object. Thus, metaphor can be said to subsist within the spirit of the human being, firmly sustaining a unique, continuing and valid bond between human beings and nature. Furthermore, it is pre-linguistic, and functions at deeper levels than language within the archaeology of the human mind, emerging from the emotional realm.The phenomena of logic, of labeling, classification, provisional thought and provisional detachment from emotion, all exclusively human processes at a higher order of abstraction, could only emerge and develop as language itself began to come into its own. I could carry the argument further to include issues of evolutionary development, of left brain (logical function) vs. right brain (emotional center), mediated through the corpus callosum, popular concepts with wide acceptance, but I will leave that continuing research to the brain physiologists. Suffice it to say that metaphor has remained a powerful, live underlying process of language which can never be supplanted by exclusively linguistic phenomena such as logical categories, provisional detachment, and so on.Metaphor is thus both a characteristic of language and a representation of fundamental attributes of the human psyche. Moreover, it is a creative process in which human beings semiologize the world.Using the framework of cognitive linguistic theories, this paper analyzes and discusses the relationships between language and man and the external world from the perspective of metaphor. Through analysis of numerous detailed and accurate examples/evidences I collected myself, this paper will show that metaphor is not only the entity in which language exists but also the thinking mode of human beings. It is all the more a cognitive mechanism on which everyday life depends.After reviewing the history of research on metaphor both in Western contexts and in the Orient, and explicating the definitions of metaphor, categories of metaphor, and the mechanisms derived from the framework of cognitive linguistic theories, this paper will focus on three dimensions: The cultural dimension of metaphor In this section I analyze metaphorical words or phrases in Chinese, and inform the reader of the great changes that have occurred in China recently. Humanity is more and more respected and society is more and more open to the outside world. There is also an analysis of metaphorical usage in English, which suggests that differing conceptual metaphors determine the different outlooks of people and different world views. Although metaphorical cognition of embodiment is a common way of cognition, and all nations share some culture in common, and there are same or similar metaphorical concepts in different national languages, due to different locations, cultural backgrounds, religions and so on and so forth.The characteristics of culture reflected by the use of conceptual metaphors in English are quite different from those projected by the use of conceptual metaphors in Chinese. The reason for this is that a language is a kind of outlook; that at a language itself is a cultural power and cultural mode. Based on recognizing their body first, the English and Chinese nations try to know about the world through certain variations within their metaphorical mechanisms; thus they form different concepts or outlooks. The philosophical dimension of metaphor Traditional and classical logic is a rigid dual value- logic/dialectic based on Aristotelian syllogisms– major premises, minor premises, and conclusions. In this framework, a proposition or a judgment can be shown to be either right or wrong, either true or false, valid or invalid. So in the historical tradition of scientific philosophy, metaphor has been regarded as,ā-logical (non-logical) or anti-logical. In this section I create three models: a model of maternal bodily recognition of nature, a model of wresting resources/nourishment from Nature Mum, and the model of protecting Nature Mum.With these models I try to illustrate that metaphorical thinking is an inborn characteristic, functioning as a kind of proto-language, which can transcend such operant concepts, on more abstract level, as trueness and falseness, history, here and there, the physical world, real world and imaginary world. On the surface, metaphor would appear to be against logic, but in fact, it transcends logic. In other words, metaphor surpasses the traditional dual logic by subsuming greater meaning within a larger and more comprehensive whole. So called logic or trueness is no more than the metaphorical product of the thinking subject. The applicational dimension of metaphor From the perspective of natural science, the exquisiteness of nature goes much beyond, is much above that of the senses and comprehension of human beings. Thus, the understanding of nature by human beings is just like a blind person feeling the elephant. Reality doesn't present itself to us directly as there is a veil of appearance between objective reality and cognitive subject. What we observe is not the object in its own pure essence, the noumenon, which is, by definition, unknowable, but its manifestation– its phenomenon, appearance, or even the influence of its phenomenon or appearance, reflecting the relations between our subjective selves and the noumenal reality'out there.'What metaphor grasps is just those relations, but not the wider substantiality, the noumenon, by Kant's definition, unknowable in its true essence. Under such circumstances, metaphorical thinking is one of the best ways for scientists to explore nature, the world and the unknown. This part tries to show that scientists made scientific terms with metaphor and they have solved many difficult scientific problems through metaphorical means. In other words, scientists have to get into a metaphorical world before they can get close to reality.It is also true with politics. Statesmen build their persuasive powers of speech and further their political aspirations through the use of metaphor, for in politics metaphor has the function of naming and persuading. Here the Iraq war is quoted to show that how the American government built political metaphors and how those metaphors had an influence on the general populace.Toward the end I expound the differing views on cognitive metaphors. Although most linguistic scholars and researchers believe that metaphor makes it possible for people to understand things which are beyond the normal reaches of traditional/logical reason, or can't be experienced so that the world or reality separated by reason and logic can be integrated into a harmonious one.Metaphor can produce, construct, or modify meanings. It can also open up a new world. Metaphorical languages and metaphorical thinking make the activity of human beings holy, poetic and eloquent. However, there are many criticisms of conceptual metaphorical theory from scholars in various disciplines within the cognitive sciences. Some scholars complain that many of the linguistic analyses presented in favor of conceptual metaphor theory are based on selected isolated examples often cited by the research analyst to bolster his larger argument. Raymond Gibbs, a pioneer in psycholinguistics, has argued that the present conceptual metaphorical theory is, in terms of cognitive grammar, unfalsifiable, if the only data in its favor is the systematic grouping of metaphors linked by a common theme. They even think that many conventional expressions viewed as metaphorical by cognitive linguists are not metaphorical at all, and are treated by ordinary speakers as literal speech. In this way, cognitive linguists fail to draw a distinction between literal and metaphorical meaning.