A Cognitive Analysis Of Metaphors In Chinese Song Lyrics

In traditional linguistics, metaphor is regarded as a rhetoric device. The recent studies of cognitive linguistics present metaphor as a powerful tool for understanding and expressing abstract concepts, which is not only a part of language, but also a part of cognition.In recent years, metaphor and its application is increasingly attracting more attention in testing ground of particular meaning and the understanding for the whole.Lyrics are the written words in a song. The meaning conveyed in lyrical verses can be explicit or implicit. Metaphor is one of the most important ways, employed by the lyric writers to express subtle thoughts and feelings in Chinese song lyrics.Metaphor is a means of human beings'cognition, and it palys an indispensable role in human conceptualization. The cognitive approach claims that metaphor is a prevalent phenomenon in ordinary language, that metaphor arises from mapping among different cognitive domains, especially the mapping from the concrete domains to the abstract domains. A working mechanism of metaphor should include Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Fauconnier and Turner's Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT). The former holds that metaphor works by mapping from the source domain to the target domain; the latter, as a complement to the mapping theory, claims that metaphor arises from the simultaneous interaction among four mental spaces, with a result of blended space and an emergent structure. This thesis tries to use these cognitive theories to explore the working mechanism and inferential process of metaphors in Chinese song lyrics.This thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapter one is a brief introduction of rationale, aim, significance, research methodology, data collection and structure of the thesis.Chapter two is literature review, including traditional views of metaphor at home and abroad, linguistic features of Chinese song lyrics and also the cognitive researches on metaphors in Chinese song lyrics.Chapter three is the theoretical framework for this study, which includes the definition and classification of metaphor. This is followed by a brief survey of conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory. Chapter four is the application of these theories such as CMT and CBT to the analysis of metaphors in Chinese song lyrics. From these analyses, we are trying to understand how the lyric writers create and generate metaphors in Chinese song lyrics and how people appreciate the song lyrics. Some suggestions are also put forward for lyric writers and lyric readers.Chapter five intends to explore the relationship between metaphors and the song lyrics and attempts to find the functions of the metaphors in song lyrics.Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis, comprising summaries of findings and limitations of the study.Through the cognitive analysis of metaphors in Chinese song lyrics, we can easily find that the main function of metaphor is making the source domain more meaningful on the basis of the target domain, by using similar association, in result that the song lyrics bring out rich aesthetic significance. Furthermore, to create more aesthetic space and leave more room for reflection, it is suggested that metaphors should be appropriately applied in lyric expressions.