The Cognitive And Cultural Features Of Metaphor And The Metaphorical Meaning Construction In Cultural Context

Traditional metaphor theories view metaphor simply as an important stylistic device but some of the contemporary metaphor theories tend to see it as a central tool of our cognitive apparatus. It is central to our understanding of how language, thought and discourse are structured. Consequently the study of metaphor has been of interest to scholars in a wide range of disciplines. Their research shows that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a cognitive phenomenon.This paper consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. In introduction, this paper first takes a broad historical perspective on metaphor studies, noting the shift from the figurative to the cognitive aspect of metaphor and then suggests that, since metaphor works in a particular context, the cultural and the cognitive can be considered as integral parts of metaphor researchThe body contains three chapters. The first chapter explores metaphor from a cognitive perspective. Metaphor, as a bridge linking and comprising the known and the unknown, the tangible and the less tangible, the familiar and the new, enables us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another. The cognitive approach to metaphor sees language and conceptual systems as operating interactively. And mapping is one of the core concepts in the cognitive research into metaphor. This mapping, from the cognitive viewpoint, covers the two types: the mappings of concepts and of images, corresponding to conceptual metaphors and image metaphors. This chapter then discusses the cognitive features of metaphor, namely, systematicity and asymmetry of metaphor.The second chapter concerns itself with the cultural features of metaphor within the cognitive domain, noting that metaphors reflect cognitive models of peoplewithin a given culture, thus tied to the culture. The research is done both within one culture and across cultures. Metaphor, within one culture, is characterized by its cultural coherence and cultural symbolism: on the one hand, the most fundamental values in a culture are coherent with the metaphoric structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture; on the other hand, metaphor, as a symbolic representation of a culture, constructs the connections between human experience and the coherent metaphorical systems that characterize the culture. And metaphors, across cultures, exhibit features as follows: the common core of metaphors across cultures, the acceptance of foreign metaphors by the target culture, and the cultural distinctions of metaphors across cultures to which the differences in traditional cultural conception, historical cultural background or the choice of cultural image lead.The last chapter of the body deals with metaphor understanding in cultural context. Following the definition of metaphorical meaning as conceptualization of metaphorical cognitive modes, this paper seeks to show that the construction of culturally-motivated metaphorical meaning involves readers' or listeners' cultural capacity, the capacity achieved through acquiring cultural knowledge and through putting this knowledge into practice, and suggests that two theories, i.e. conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual integration theory can be applied to construct the inferences of metaphorical meaning. And this chapter also explores context sensitivity in the process of the meaning construction of metaphor, revealing that this sensitivity varies from conventional metaphors to novel metaphors.In conclusion, this paper shows that metaphor is a complex socio-cultural and psycholinguistic phenomenon. Metaphorical expressions only bear meaning potential and human beings have a biological capacity for double-scope integration. It is the combination of metaphorical expressions with the biological capacity thatresults in the construction of metaphorical meaning, and this construction is a dynamic process, which depends in varying degrees on a configuration of contextual gestalt.