The Interpretation Of Metaphors In English Idioms

With the cognitive view of metaphors and idioms, the thesis is to study the interpretation of metaphors in English idioms. It can deepen the comprehending metaphor as a cognitive model and familiarize the semantic meanings of English idioms to language users. Through the analysis, we get the following conclusions: idioms are compositional and semantically motivated; every type of metaphors separately serves as cognitive mechanism for the interpretation of English idioms; systematicity of structure metaphor is well displayed in English idioms; mapping from source domain to four types of target domains—quantity, society hierarchy, time and state, in orientational metaphors is crucial for the interpretation of English idioms; the systemacitiy of tenors in ontological metaphors reveals the systemacitiy of English idioms; the container metaphors, in which the containers have clear boundaries or abstract boundaries, also serve as motivations for semantic meanings of English idioms.