Metaphors In Netspeak

Based on Lakoff and Johnson's influential theory on metaphor, a detailed analysis is made on people's conceptualization process on computer and the Internet. Three factors are mentioned in this explaining work for every concrete metaphor, namely people's experiential basis, similarities between the old and the new thing, and the concrete mapping process. Besides metaphorical thinking, other tools such as reasoning are also discussed to help disclose the generation process of metaphorical netspeak. Three kinds of metaphors figured out according to the similarities from which the mappings derive, namely mappings based on physical similarities, mappings based on psychological similarities and those which are based on the co-function of the two. It is also found that different conceptual metaphors perform differently in productivity, which means their ability to generate metaphorical expressions. A hierarchical system is thus founded among the different classes of Internet metaphors based on the different levels of mapping, namely root metaphor being the superior level, basic metaphor the most frequently used and prototypical level, and the extended metaphor at the subordinate place.Based on a large amount of linguistic data, the view is proposed that metaphor is the basis of comprehending computer and the Internet, and computer metaphors have a great influence on the vocabulary of netspeak.There still exist some insufficient discussions in this thesis although the computer metaphor is analyzed in great detail. Particularly the linguistic data are mainly from Chinese language and the discussion about computer and Internet metaphor is under the background of Chinese culture. Therefore, the cultural factors and psychological factors about metaphors need further research.