Cognitive Interpretation Of Synaesthetic Metaphors In Classical Chinese Poetry

This paper intends to explore the mechanism of synaesthesia's interpretation from the cognitive perspective and offer a reasonable paradigm for interpreting synaesthetic metaphors.Synaesthesia (synaesthetic metaphors), a term of aesthetics, rhetoric and linguistics, is often called "通感" in Chinese. The word "synaesthesia" is believed to have originated from ancient Greek, which means a mixing of sensations, a transfer from one domain to another. Synaesthetic metaphors in this paper, extracted from classical Chinese poetry, fall into two groups, namely, single synaesthetic metaphor and composite synaesthetic metaphor.Traditional studies of synaesthesia lay much emphasis on its aesthetic effects and rhetorical functions rather than its cognitive operations involved in its interpretation. Although some scholars apply Conceptual Blending Theory to the study of synaesthesia in order to investigate the cognitive process of uttering and understanding synaesthesia (Xin Yan 2004, Lian Jingjing 2007, Wang Yuhong 2008, Wang Xiang 2008), there are limitations in interpreting synaesthetic metaphors within the network model of Conceptual Blending Theory with respect to selective projection from the inputs onto the blend in blending, hence a more applicable synaesthesia-based network model with the addition of filtering put forward in this study.In the synaesthesia-based network model, the whole process of conceptual blending involves firstly mapping between the inputs manipulated by the generic space with some common, usually more abstract, structure and organization shared by the inputs, and the cognitive process of filtering which constrains and facilitates the projection from the inputs onto the blend by filtering away something irrelevant by means of context in five aspects: sifting out some irrelevant elements and keeping some relevant ones directly, singularizing meaning, specifying meaning, solving the literal conflicts and eliciting the implied meaning as well as perfecting meaning, then the selective projection onto the blend in which the emergent structure is constructed in three interrelated mental operations—composition, completion and elaboration. The construction process of emergent structure is the process of interpretation. Then the synaesthesia-based network model is certified in the interpretation of three typical examples of synaesthesia.This paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction, which gives synaesthesia a brief definition and explains the reasons for choosing synaesthesia as the topic of this study. After that, the key research questions of the paper are raised, followed by the theoretical framework, objective and significance as well as methodology.Chapter Two is a literary review concerning synaesthesia, mainly from rhetorical perspective, aesthetic perspective and cognitive perspective, accompanied by comments on the previous studies of synaesthesia.Chapter Three mainly classifies the collected synaesthetic metaphors into single synaesthetic metaphor and composite synaesthetic metaphor on the basis of the number of the senses involved and directionality of synaesthesia as well as classification of sense modality. Furthermore, additional sense modality is proposed and analyzed.Chapter Four is devoted to expounding the theoretical framework of this paper. Starting from a brief introduction to Fauconnier's blending theory, this chapter illustrates the blending process with a concrete example under the network model offered by Fauconnier. Based on Fauconnier's blending network model, a synaesthesia-based blending network model with the process of filtering is put forward.Chapter Five analyzes the interpreting process of synaesthesia by walking through three typical synaesthetic metaphors within the synaesthesia-based network model.The last chapter is a conclusion, which summarizes the whole analysis and states the limitations of this study.