Metaphor——its Nature And Significance

It is commonly thought that metaphor is one of rhetoric devices employed to achieve the cllt of comparison in literary work in particular. As a matter of Ii.ict. this understanding is liniited in that metaphor is not only a matter of language but primarily a matter of thought and action. It is pervasive in both language and thought. But it takes shape firstly as a conceptual nietaphor when we conceptualize our experiences from interaction with the objective world by projecting the well-known to the less well-known, the clcarly delineated to the less clearly delineated. he spokcti or written realizations of a conceptual metaphor are linguistic metaphors. herclbre, metaphor, to be more exact, is a cognitive tool. This paper attempts to reveal the sophisticated nature of metaphor by analyzing three theories concerning the generation of metaphor and discussing both linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor. It was noticed that our understanding of metaphor itivolves a kind of cognitive processe interpret metaphor liom the linguistic to the conceptual, but the latter is priority to the Ibrmcr. lie significance of this finding suggests that the awareness of both linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor is of benefit to language teaching and learning.