The Systematicity And Coherence Of Conceptual Metaphors

Metaphor has traditionally been studied by scholars in the fields of rhetorics and linguistics. The representative theories of this tradition can be summarized as the Comparison View, the Substitution View, the Interaction View and the Pragmatic View. Over the past two decades metaphor analysis has become increasingly popular most notably in the field of cognitive science. Although the cognitive view on metaphor is not totally a new historical outcome, this trend of cognitive study on metaphor is extensively reinforced by Lakoff and his colleagues with their influential Conceptual Metaphor Theory.Lakoff and Johnson (1980) propose that not only the human conceptual system involves in the processing, understanding and making use of metaphors, but the conceptual system itself is metaphorically structured. Thus, metaphor is found to be pervasive in our everyday life, in language and most importantly, in thought and action. Metaphor plays a basic role in defining the way we perceive the world, the way we think and act to that perceived world. The reason why metaphors in linguistic expressions are possible is that there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).The claim for the metaphorical nature of our conceptual system has been widely appreciated. But what enables the conceptual metaphors to work in a systematic way hiour conceptual system is rather ignored. Seeing that, this dissertation holds that it is the sytematicity and coherence of conceptual metaphors that enable our metaphorical thought to function in a systematic and coherent way. And it is the sytematicity and coherence of conceptual metaphors in our metaphorical thought that sanction our metaphorical language used in a systematic and consistent manner.Thus, on the basis of Lakoff and his colleagues' cognitive view, this paper focuses on the conceptual metaphors in our conceptual system. Two features, namely, the systematicity and coherence of conceptual metaphors, are investigated by means of answering three questions. First, what is the fundamental theoretical framework underlying the four basic elements, the source domain, the target domain, the experiential basis and the mapping? Second, what are the systematicity and coherence of conceptual metaphors? Third, can we testify the systematicity and coherence of conceptual metaphors through cross-cultural linguistic data analysis?The experiential basis has undergone three steps of development, from the experiential gestalt to the image schema and to the Embodied Mind Hypothesis. It has been verified as the groundwork for the Lakovian approach on metaphor. And the mapping has been validated as the unique working mechanism within each conceptual metaphor. The nature, the type, the inheritance hierarchy of mapping and the constraints on the mapping are discussed.The systematicity of conceptual metaphors is mainly realized by the metaphorical entailments and highlighting and hiding shared by the three types of conceptual metaphors besides their unique systematicity. The coherence of conceptual metaphors is realized through five manners: (1) The inheritance hierarchy of mapping, (2) by shared metaphorical entailment, (3) a basic metaphor that is common to some conceptual metaphors can mold the basis for the coherence among them, (4) some metaphors are related to one another because they are special cases of a more general metaphor or a composite metaphor, (5) some metaphors are related to one another because they have the same grounding of commonplace knowledge.The third question is answered by providing a case study of Idea metaphors in English and Chinese. Four principal Idea metaphors, IDEAS ARE PEOPLE, IDEAS ARE PLANTS, IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, and IDEAS ARE FOOD, are researched. The findings of the case study have demonstrated that, for one thing, the four principal metaphors, are pervasive hi English and Chinese and these metaphors are used systematically andcoherently by both the English speakers and Chinese speakers; this accounts for t...