A Metaphorical Approach To Allegories In Zhuangzi

Metaphor is traditionally considered as a figure of speech, a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson rocked the world of linguistics and cognitive science with Metaphors We Live By. They argue that metaphor is pervasive in our everyday ordinary life, in language and most importantly, in thought and action. Our conceptual system is largely metaphorical. The way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day are very much a matter of metaphor. Since then, metaphor has become a central topic in cognitive linguistics.Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive theory on metaphor is also known as conceptual metaphor theory. Conceptual metaphors are metaphors we live by, such as LIFE IS A JOURNEY, TIME IS MONEY, etc., while metaphors that are in language are metaphorical linguistic expressions. Conceptual metaphors may be realized at various levels of linguistic organization, i.e., a word, phrase, clause, sentence and text, such as poems, novels and allegories.In this paper, we are going to research on the allegories in Zhuangzi, a Chinese Taoist classic from the cognitive metaphorical perspective. We consider these allegories in Zhuangzi linguistic metaphors at the textual level. The study utilizes the authentic Chinese texts in Zhuangzi, supplemented with authoritative English translations. Through the analysis we find that from the cognitive metaphorical perspective, in the context of Zhuangzi, allegories are employed to talk about the abstract Taoist ideas, so allegories in Zhuangzi constitute the source domain, which are stories of historical figures, stories of the natural world and mythologies, and the major Taoist ideas of Zhuangzi constitute the target domain, which are"Tao as the origin of the world","uniformity of things","non-action in face of nature"and"absolute freedom".Each allegory has a theme in its co-text. The theme of each allegory constitutes the micro-target domain. Studies find that themes of allegories are in most cases implied. They could be inferred from the context. So an allegory may have several themes and several allegories may share one theme. However, mappings between each allegory and its theme are in agreement with Lakoff's (1992) mapping principles. Allegories in Zhuangzi have several major functions: explanation, reconceptualization, argument by analogy, expressing emotional attitudes, textual structuring and fiction.The closeness of metaphor and allegory has received attention from linguists and rhetoricians, but they hold different opinions. We conclude the paper with a proposal to use"allegorical-type metaphor"to characterize the relationship between allegory and metaphor. Features and functions of allegorical-type metaphor are summarized based on our study of allegories in Zhuangzi.