The Cognitive Study On Metaphors Of Basic-level Animal Terms

Metaphor, using words or experiences of one domain to express matters or experiences of another, is a universal phenomenon in human's cognition and linguistic realization. The investigation of metaphor can reveal the magic of wording at the verbal level and penetrate the underlying possible characteristics of human's cognition, and it has attracted a good deal of attention from cognitive approach in recent decades. Ever since George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) broadened the understanding of metaphor from the linguistic field to the area of cognition, the research of metaphor through figurative expressions have been gradually carried out and many things such as body, body part, color, advertisement etc. have been found to be richly conceptualized and well embodied in our conceptual system. However, most Chinese research articles focus on the introduction and the explanation of metaphor theories and their similarities and differences, and until recently the researchers have begun their studies on the detailed language phenomena. But the study on metaphor of basic-level animal terms is not systematic and not deep enough now. Although it is agreed that certain metaphorical expressions reflect relevant language and culture and that the digest of metaphorical expressions will improve language learning.The thesis initiates with a review of literatures concerned with metaphor and those theories applied to metaphor interpretation --- Basic-level Category Theory, Conceptual Mapping, and Image Schema. These provide a more comprehensive perspective to interpret metaphor semantically. The thesis collects and analyzes the data of metaphorical expressions of 25 basic-level animal terms and intends to concentrate on illustrating metaphorical expressions of basic-level animal terms with an integration of Conceptual Mapping Theory and Image Schema. The thesis also generalizes two schemas to interpret metaphorical meanings of those animal terms.The author collected metaphorical expressions of basic-level animal terms which came from various authoritative dictionaries of the English language. After collecting metaphorical expressions of twenty five basic-level animal terms, the author did the analysis and interpretation of metaphorical expressions of all 25 basic-level animal terms. On the basis of the interpretation, the two cognitive schemas are established and they will be analyzed in details to generalize metaphor of basic-level animal terms.Unlike previous explorations respectively from the rhetoric and cultural view, the thesis interprets and categorizes metaphorical expressions of basic-level animal terms by virtue of the integration of the cognitive schemas and the cognitive linguistics theories, and that may motivate more rewarding researches to construct a metaphor studying system based on original materials and theories of cognitive linguistics. The thesis hopes that a bridge will be built up by the two cognitive schemas which are established on the basis of conceptual mapping, and the two schemas will interpret the relationship among the animals and the relationships between the animals and the society in which they are living and by the interpretation on metaphorical expressions of basic-level animal terms that will analyze the relationship between metaphorical expressions and the cognitive way of learning the phenomena in the world and the interpretation will be more intelligible to people who work on metaphor. The schemas aiming at interpretation of metaphorical expressions of basic-level animal terms, as well as other relevant theories, provide firm foundation toward the cognitive study of metaphor, and can further instruct the study of comprehending and producing metaphorical expressions in a larger scale.