Cognitive Construal Of English Idioms

This thesis is a cognitive construal of English idioms in the framework of conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and general knowledge put forward by cognitive linguists.Idioms are the essence of language. English idioms which are honed and polished for a long time are very expressive. Views about idiom have long been controversial. One considers idiom as arbitrary, the other considers it as decomposable. In this thesis, idiom is viewed as a continuum with a few non-decomposable, some not very easy to decompose, and most decomposable. The most important cognitive mechanisms for the construal of idioms are conceptual metaphor, conceptual metonymy and general knowledge.People used to view metaphor and metonymy as rhetorical devices. But cognitive linguists have found that they have gone beyond figures of speech and have become universal ways of cognition, namely conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy. They are pervasive not only in our language, but also in our thought and action. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing abstract entities in terms of concrete ones. While metonymy uses one entity to stand for another, its primary function is referencing. General knowledge refers to people's common understanding and cognition towards certain conceptual domain.Different types of conceptual metaphor: structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor, conceptual metonymy, together with general knowledge serve as cognitive mechanisms for construal of English idioms separately or in combination. Moreover, the ontological mapping and epistemic mapping of conceptual metaphor provide reasonable explanation for the formation...