Analysis Of The Searle's Metaphor Theory

Pragmatics comes from language exploration by philosophers, it is the product of the development and deepening of modern linguistics. From the traditional view of linguistics, structuralism has dominating position in the linguistic field in the first half of the 20th century. Many linguists were concerned too much about the internal structure of language, while ignoring the actual use of it.Saussure, who was recognized as the founder of modern linguistics, considered that the langue is a system which is subject to certain rules, while parole is not, in his book '''Course in General Linguistics", He pointed out that the focus of linguistics study is langue rather than parole. As only langue can be analyzed in a careful and scientific way. Saussure's idea has influenced the direction and the basis of linguistic study.Until the late 1950s, Chomsky puts forward the Transformational Generative Grammar Theory which changed the condition of the study of linguistics, Chomsky's theory was once prevalent for some time. But the centre of Chomsky's linguistic theory is grammatical characteristics of language, it only concerns the study of transformation of syntactic structure, while ignoring the significance of language study. So it can only describe and explain language from one side but can not interpret complicated linguistic phenomena. That the shortcomings of structuralism and the limitations of the Transformational Generative Grammar Theory made many linguistics researchers started to pay attention to the practical application of language and emphasized the importance of context, which blazes a way in the study of Pragmatics.John R·Searle is one of the researchers who attaches importance to practical applications of language. His Speech Act Theory has had an important impact on the study of philosophy and Pragmatics. At the same time, John R·Searle is the first person who carries out systematic research about metaphor in the scope of pragmatics. His metaphor theory, in particular, theory on the metaphor understanding has the creative significance, which made a further step forward to the understanding mechanism of metaphor. This paper intends to focus on context as clue to expound, analyze and discuss Searle's Metaphor Theory.In order to have a clear understanding of the history about metaphor study, the first part provides the whole history of metaphor study from two different perspectives i.e. main theory by metaphor research and the scopes and methods of metaphor study. In addition, this part also introduces the necessity and the basic conditions of metaphor research in a perspective of pragmatics.The second part gives a brief exposition about the theoretical foundation of Searle's Metaphor Theory, which are Speech Act Theory of Searle and Grace's Conversation Meaning Theory. Also, this part expounds the external motives—the flaws of "The Vergleichstheorie" and the "The Interaktionstheorie" , which help Searle put forward his metaphor theory.The third part mainly discusses Searle's Metaphor Theory which regards the context as the clue. Trying to put the core of Searle's Metaphor Theory—"three steps" and "eight principles"of metaphorical understanding—into two stages which are the metaphor identification and metaphor understanding, in order to highlight the pragmatic characteristics of Searle's Metaphor Theory. This part also expounds the distinctions between metaphor, irony and indirect speech acts, which makes a preparation for the detailed analysis of it in the last part. This paper also introduces the application of Searle's Metaphor Theory—adopting Searle's Metaphor Theory into interpret the metaphors in daily life and literary works.The fourth part tries to evaluate Searle's Metaphor Theory in an objective way, pointing out its positive significance while its shortcomings, then comments on the ambiguous distinctions between metaphor and indirect speech acts and points out the distinctions and the relations between them in a further way.In a word, this paper expounds the theoretical basis and prouduce moving of the Searle's Metaphor Theory in an system way, gives an dialectic analysis and evaluation of it, makes some complementarity about its deficiency. Aiming at do some contribute to the research of the Searle's Metaphor Theory.