The Analysis Of Individualization In The Process Of Conceptual Integration

Since the publication of the work Metaphors We Live by (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980),metaphor researches have become even hotter than before. With the rejection oftraditional ways of metaphor researches, researchers have begun to study metaphors fromthe cognitive point of view and gradually accepted the embodied philosophy as thephilosophical basis of the conceptual metaphor theory. Since both the conceptualmetaphor theory and its philosophy basis—the embodied philosophy, emphasize theuniversal or the ideal attributes of conceptual metaphors, such as the universallybiological basis and the universally embodied experiences of all human beings, the reallypractical cognitive research of metaphors in use is only at the initial stage.As one of the most influential cognitive theories founded in the 20th century, theconceptual integration theory, or the blending theory, provides a brand-new perspectivefor the illustration of metaphor understanding on line. Though this perspective has nowbeen applied to analyze various metaphors, almost all these studies are confined to theuniversality or ideality in metaphor interpretation, with little attention paid to either therole of cognitive subjects, or to the differences between the cognitive subjects during theunderstanding process because according to Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (1999),the human embodied experiences, the basis of metaphors, are considered to be universal.It seems that there are no disparities existing in metaphor understanding in differentminds from this perspective, whether of the same culture or across cultures. The fact isthe opposite. What is meaningful to a subject not only depends on the subject's rationalknowledge alone but on his past experiences, values, feelings, and intuitive insights(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In the thesis, the author puts forward the view that theunderstanding process of the same metaphor is distinctively individualized due to boththe cognitive characteristics of metaphors and the individualized embodied experiencesof the cognitive subject concerning the domains. This point of view is set up by analyzingmetaphors in two representative syntactic structures from the perspective of theconceptual integration theory, with the help of the mental space theory that is on the sameline of the development of both the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptualintegration theory. With the analysis of the metaphors in both the syntactic structures of"A is B" and "X is Y of Z", the author generalizes the individualized factors such as theindividualized source domain construction, individualized compression processes,theindividualized micro-processes (composition, completion and elaboration), and even thegeneral notion in the generic space is individualized caused by the individualizedembodied experiences concerning the domains, especially the source domains. Moreover,different degrees of familiarity towards the language trigger of the metaphor and theconstantly changing embodied experiences can also induce individualization in theprocess of conceptual integration, whether in the same culture or across cultures. Thesefactors cannot be shown from the general analysis of the metaphor from this perspectivewithout the help of the mental space theory. The more hidden reason for theindividualization in the process of conceptual integration of metaphor understanding is itscognitive characteristics: analogical reasoning, creativity, imagination and associationand subjective thinking. All these characteristics are also individualized according to theanalyses of metaphors in this thesis. In the end, based on individualization in metaphorunderstanding, the author suggests the revision of the two-domain mechanism of theconceptual metaphor theory and some new ideas on metaphorical language teaching andacquisition.The thesis is composed of five chapters: Chapter one is the survey of both themetaphor theory researches and the conceptual integration theory researches;in Chaptertwo, some of the principles of both the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptualintegration theory used in the thesis are listed;Chapter three is the intensive analyses ofthe understanding processes of metaphors in both the "A is B" syntactic structure and "Xis Y of Z" syntactic structure in different minds from the perspective of the conceptualintegration theory with the help of the mental space theory;in Chapter four, the cognitivecharacteristics of metaphors are generalized according to the analyses in chapter three;Chapter five includes the revelation from the individualization in metaphor understandingprocess for the two-domain mechanism of the conceptual metaphor theory and themetaphorical language teaching and acquisition.