A Cognitive Approach To Conceptual Metaphors In The Analects

The Analects is full of metaphor corpora. However, almost all the previous researches are done from the perspectives of the derivation and meanings of the book's title, the compliers, the annotation texts, English translations, historical influence, and application value, etc. Few scholars interpret The Analects from the cognitive perspective. Based on previous researches, this thesis is aimed to study the conceptual metaphors in The Analects from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, to explore the mechanism of metaphor and Confucius's ideological system, and to analyze its impact on society and culture.The examples chosen for this thesis are from the Chinese edition of The Analects by Yang Bojun. According to Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this thesis adopts the methodology of description and analysis to discuss the similarities between the source domain and the target domain of 71 pieces selected from The Analects. It not only gives an explanatory description to the metaphor corpora collected, but also divides them into three categories:structural metaphors, orientational metaphors, and ontological metaphors. The research results are as follows:1) Structural metaphors also can be divided into three major sections in The Analects:water metaphors, GETTING THE TRUTH IS A JOURNEY, and people metaphors.2) Orientational metaphors are mainly UP/DOWN metaphors: HIGH STATUS IS UP, LOW STATUS IS DOWM; VIRTUE IS UP, DEPRAVITY IS DOWN; and STRENGTH IS UP, WEAKNESS IS DOWN.3) Ontological metaphors primarily project "Ren", "Xin", "Tian" and other abstract concepts onto concrete objects, or personify them.4) Metaphor is related with the social cultural stage:different vessels are conceptualized metaphorically as people in structural metaphors; feudal hierarchy ideologies are shown in orientational metaphors; and Confucius's faith in and reverence to Heaven are reflected in ontological metaphors.5) Confucius's ideologies have both unique positive significance and limitations.6) Besides the concrete source domain that is mapped onto the abstract target domain, there have been two other types of source mapping actually. One is the concrete source domain mapped onto the concrete target domain and the other is the abstract source domain mapped onto the abstract target domain.Although this thesis does not excavate all the metaphors in The Analects, it has an extensive research on Confucius's ideology and gets an overall and better understanding of metaphorical modes and mechanisms of Chinese. Hence, the research will give help to the foreign language translation of The Analects and analyze other Chinese classical literature works with the Conceptual Metaphor Theory for the researchers.