Metaphors Seen In Cusine

As it is known to all, China takes pride in her rich food culture. However, the former researches are exclusively concerned on food for the sake of food and thus seem a little bit monotonous. According to cognitive linguists such as Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is pervasive in our everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of what we think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Based on this theory, this thesis aims to identify, classify and explain metaphors used in a special field—Chinese cuisine by incorporating semantics, cognitive and pragmatic dimensions and by referring to the processing level of analyzing metaphors under the framework of applied linguistics proposed by Cameron (1999:7). By analyzing how the concepts are activated, how the identification of metaphors and their meanings are reached in cuisine as well as by categorizing cuisine metaphors, we hereby discovered that there indeed exist metaphorical phenomena in this particular field. With several metaphorically used Chinese characters, novelty, attraction and vividness are added to dishes, either similar in shape, in color, or in mental experience. Shu Dingfang (2000: 116) says that metaphor is a means of raising tastes of former plain and ordinary things. Apart from that, the author suggests that cuisine metaphor is also a way of spreading Chinese culture since some of the novel names of dishes are related to Chinese allusions.