Functions Of Cognitive Context In Metaphor Interpretation

In verbal communication, metaphors are widely used to convey communicative purpose indirectly. The study of metaphor has been taken seriously from the old time. It started early from Aristotle's rhetoric and has been developed to the cognitive metaphor at present by many scholars. The cognitive metaphor theory holds that metaphor is not only a phenomenon of language, but also a way of human's thought that influences a lot on people's language ability, cognitive ability and communicative ability. Therefore, the study of metaphor, among which the metaphor interpretation is an important part, becomes very important.Metaphor interpretation is a process of selecting related knowledge stored in mind, activating relevant assumptions in one's cognitive context and then combing them with the concrete context to infer the speaker's underlying informative intention. Therefore, the interpretation and creation of metaphor relies on context. With the birth of cognitive linguistics, cognitive context is widely accepted by people. In contrast with traditional static context, the dynamic cognitive context has a better function in metaphor interpretation. Therefore,Sperber and Wilson's theory of cognitive context is employed in the thesis to explore functions that the cognitive context has in metaphor understanding and how the cognitive context influences the metaphor understanding.The thesis contains six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction, including the purpose, the structure and data collection of this thesis. Chapter two and chapter three are the literature review of metaphor and context. The thesis divides the cognitive context into three parts: the linguistic context, the situational context and background knowledge. Then, chapter four and chapter five are the exploration of the functions of cognitive context in metaphor interpretation through the detail analysis of cases in those three kinds of cognitive context. Chapter four explores the functions of linguistic context and situational context in metaphor interpretation. The functions of linguistic context are discussed in terms of lexical and clausal context, with examples form daily life. The functions of situational context are explored from the perspective of setting and field, and are illustrated by metaphor examples from literature and other different fields such as politics, economics etc. Chapter five discusses the functions of background knowledge from the perspective of knowledge structure and cultural context. Case analyses in chapter Four and Chapter Five have strongly proved that cognitive context has two main functions in metaphor interpretation: restriction function and explanation. Chapter six is the conclusion of the whole thesis. The aim of the thesis is that the exploration of the functions of cognitive context in metaphor interpretation will help people achieve successful communication and avoid misunderstanding in interactions, and can help students with their English study.