A Cognitive Approach To Temporal Metaphor From Inter-domain Mapping

Metaphor is not merely a figure of speech in rhetoric regarded as traditionally, but a way of thinking and a powerful cognitive instrument for our conceptualization of abstract categories. Modern metaphorical studies show that the human language is integrally a metaphorical system of symbols, that metaphor is"the omnipresent principle of language"(Richards) and that metaphor is a systematic way of thinking, conducting and communicating, that is,"metaphorical concept or conceptual metaphor"(Lakoff). This study agrees with the above views on metaphor and adopts the cognitive approach in carrying out the analysis of temporal metaphors. By explaining the concept of time on the level of cognition, this study actually deepens our understanding of TIME.In this study, the author first reviews four pre-cognitive approaches to metaphor in history, that is, Aristotelian approach, the traditional linguistic approach, the pragmatic approach of Searle, and the interactionist approach in order to elicit the cognitive approach to metaphor, because all these four approaches fail to recognize metaphor's fundamental and indispensable role in human conceptualization, in the discussion of which the author concludes that metaphor is abstract reasoning that is based on spatial reasoning through the metaphorical mappings of image schemas. Then a relatively systematic cognitive analysis of temporal metaphors from three aspects, that is, the lexis, the grammar and the corpora is carried out in order to provide a piece of evidence for the cognitive linguist's claim—"our abstract reasoning is largely metaphorical and there should exist universal metaphorical concepts"(Lan Chun), which is also the major purpose of this study. And also in this part the author puts forward that space-time extension is the most actively used metaphorical extension in temporal expressions. Finally, limitations of this study and suggestions for future researches are put forward.This study is only one small step of a long journey of cognitive investigation into human conceptualization. Hopefully, this study can provide helpful advice for further researches in metaphor.