On Discourse Function Of Metaphor In Wedding Couplets

Metaphor, as a phenomenon of language in use, has been of interest to the scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, philosophy and literature. In traditional rhetoric, metaphor is a figure of speech, which is ornamental to language essentially. With the emergence of the cognitive linguistics, the nature and role of metaphor has acquired a renewed recognition. Metaphor has been regarded as a central tool of our cognition. It is very central to our understanding of how language, thought and discourse are structured.Wedding couplets are unique literary art forms in Chinese. In the composing process, many good things are used as metaphors or symbols of the newlyweds, which can create a beautiful, bright and warm atmosphere. In this thesis, the cognitive metaphor view is adopted to analyze the expressive forms of metaphors in wedding couplets, and the relationships between the metaphorical meaning and the salient theme of wedding couplets, which aims to interpret the discourse function of metaphor better.Wedding couplets ,as an integrate discourse, fully expresses the festive atmosphere and enthusiastic praises and best wishes to the newlyweds, whose meaning and implication can be obtained by the interpretation of the whole discourse. According to the cognitive linguists, metaphor exists everywhere, therefore there are also a mass of metaphors in wedding couplets. Metaphor is a mode of thinking manifested through language, which is a significant means of constructing the discourse structure. The thesis discusses the discourse function of metaphor from its cognitive and semantic features. Discussed from cognitive perspective, metaphor consists of a source domain which is relatively clear in structure and a target domain(marital domain)which is relatively vague in structure; and then the schematic structure of the source domain is mapped onto the target domain(marital domain)through metaphorical mapping, through which the reader can construct and understand the marriage vorgang. The mapping has the characteristics of direction and locality, and can be divided into content mapping and structure mapping, which constitutes the semantic relations of the deep structure of wedding couplets to form the invisible network for the discourse construction. Discussed from semantic perspective, the cohesive chains of metaphor are the expressive forms of the coherence of wedding couplets in the surface structure. The extension of metaphor makes the wedding couplet develop around the central metaphor and the words or phrases in the discourse produce the linear contacts to form cohesive chains. The cohesive chains have certain forms and structures in wedding couplets, which is the visible network for the discourse construction. The combination of invisible and visible networks of metaphor in wedding couplets constructs an integrate discourse.Via analysis, we come to a conclusion that the combination of invisible and visible networks of metaphor in wedding couplets can construct an integrate discourse. Metaphor, as a cognitive tool, is an effective means to interpret the cohesion and coherence of wedding couplets.