A Cognitive Study Of Plant Metaphors In A Dream Of Red Mansions

A large number of plant metaphors exist in the Chinese language, but little research has been done from this aspect. Some papers on plant metaphors are merely limited to a brief list of some metaphor phenomena from the perspective of similarity. The former studies haven't systematically explored the mapping process of plant metaphors. In the traditional view, preexisting objective similarity is regarded as the basis of metaphor. Nevertheless, it fails to account for many other cases. The cognitive linguistic view maintains that conceptual metaphors are based on a variety of human experiences, including correlations in experience, various kinds of nonobjective similarities, biological and cultural roots shared by the two concepts, and possibly others.In recent years, cognitive linguistic theory has been applied to analyze literary texts frequently, especially the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson.This thesis is an attempt to analyze the phenomenon of plant metaphors used in A Dream of Red Mansions within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory so as to find out a relatively well-defined and systematic criterion for classifying plant metaphors and to explain their cognitive operating processes. It is an analysis of more than three hundred samples of plant metaphors taken from A Dream of Red Mansions by adopting a corpus-based approach. Special attention has been paid to the mapping process from the source domain to the target domain, and also to the experiential grounding of those metaphorical expressions and to their realizations in A Dream of Red Mansions.The paper also analyzes some factors which lead to difficulties in understanding metaphor, then discusses the relationship between metaphor and culture, and illustrates how to understand metaphors culturally from three aspects—techno-economic system, social system and ideational system by analyzing a lot of examples. Last, it proposes some effective ways to improve the comprehension of Chinese metaphors.By taking an analysis of the plant metaphors in A Dream of Red Mansions, the conclusion is drawn as follows: given that agriculture was an established source of livelihood in the East, Chinese people have a deep perception towards plants owing to the cognitive basis and cultural background. They are good at observing the similarities of humankind and others with plants. Therefore, a large number of plant metaphors appear in the book. Metaphor has a close relationship with Chinese culture, which contributes to lifelikeness, liveliness, vividness and diversity of the language form. We should combine the appreciation of plant metaphors with the unique Chinese traditional culture to perceive the characteristics of the exquisite Chinese language.