A Cognitive Study Of English Proverbs

According to Raymond (1995), proverbs are those familiar, fixed, sentential expressions that express well-known truths, social norms, or moral themes. People have used them to express their understanding of beliefs, values and surroundings in their life. Meanwhile, many proverbs offer important guidance for daily life. As an important linguistic phenomenon, proverbs have always attracted scholars'attention both at home and abroad. However, most previous researches on proverbs tend to emphasize the comprehension and translation of individual proverb from the perspective of traditional linguistics.This thesis aims to analyze English proverbs from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and explore how the cognitive mechanism helps to work in people's understanding of proverbs. To begin with, the thesis reviews the researches on proverbs at home and abroad. Then, the theoretical framework of the study– conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy are expatiated. In light of cognitive linguistics, both metaphor and metonymy are cognitive mechanisms. They are very important cognitive tools for human beings to conceptualize and express abstract meanings and they are widely existent in daily life.Based on the language materials, this study gives a comprehensive cognitive analysis of English proverbs. The data collected for this study come from Bilingual English Proverbs with Cross Index (1997). With the help of systematic random sampling, 350 English proverbs are chosen as the research subjects. The samples are analyzed in both qualitative and quantitative methods by adopting Lakoff's Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Gibbs'Conceptual Metonymy TheoryBy the analysis of samples, the research comes to the conclusion: (1) there are quite a large number of conceptual metaphors and metonymies in English proverbs, which confirms Lakoff's claim that conceptual metaphors are pervasive; (2) metaphorical mapping is systematic, so there are some interrelated metaphorical expressions in the mapping of one metaphor; (3) sometimes, the compliment and interaction between conceptual metaphor and metonymy that play a more important role for the understanding of English proverbs; (4) life experience, knowledge and specific culture contribute much to the cognition of English proverb.This thesis analyzes the cognitive mechanism in the understanding of English proverbs and reveals the cognitive process of English proverbs theoretically. And it is also very helpful for the English learners to better understand and apply English proverbs.