Textual Functions Of Conceptual Metaphor And English Reading Teaching

The study of metaphor has always been an interesting subject,which attracts great attentions from scholars of all the time.In history,since Aristotle's time,different perspectives on metaphor have been put forward by philosophers,psychologists,linguists and other learned people.Traditionally,metaphor has been viewed as one of the rhetorical devices,which is used for decoration and ornament in nature.However,in the past few decades,the situation has undergone a radical change.The publication of Lakoff and Johnson's book Metaphors We Live By(1980) leads to the further understanding of the nature of metaphor from a cognitive perspective.Lakoff and Johnson put forward the conceptual metaphor theory.As they state in their work,metaphor is a basic way of human thinking.It is pervasive throughout everyday language structuring not only how we talk,but also how we think and act.Metaphor is viewed not only as a linguistic phenomenon,but also a cognitive activity in which experiences in well-known domain are mapped onto those in less well-known domain.Most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature,and thus,metaphor is a cognitive tool.It is reasonable to infer that metaphor plays an important role in conceptualizing human experience and thus linguistically it can help to organize a discourse.During recent years,more and more scholars have done research on the textual role of metaphor both abroad and at home.It has been found that the use of conceptual metaphor at discourse level can contribute to cohesion and coherence.Based on previous researches,this thesis aims at investigating into the cohesive and coherent functions of conceptual metaphor in English reading teaching.By combining Lakoff and John's conceptual metaphor theory with the methods of discourse analysis,the author makes a tentative analysis of the cohesive and coherent forces of conceptual metaphor in discourse.To testify the significance of the textual functions of conceptual metaphor in English reading teaching,the present study makes a series of investigation in various sample texts,which are said to be rich in conceptual metaphor.Meanwhile,case studies are made in order to explore the metaphor-oriented English reading text in terms of the textual functions of conceptual metaphors involved in it.In some reading passages,conceptual metaphor can contribute to developing the topic,organizing the whole text,presenting the author's intentions as well as making the expressions more vivid.This thesis falls into six chapters.Chapter One serves as an introduction,introducing the topic,purpose,significance,methodology and the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two is devoted to a critical literature review,which is concerned with studies on metaphors as well as the related methods on cohesion and coherence.Chapter Three provides the theoretical framework for the present study—conceptual metaphor theory.It discusses in detail conceptual metaphor mainly from four aspects:its definition,philosophical basis,working mechanism and systematicity.Chapter Four presents a study with sample analysis to show how conceptual metaphor performs the cohesive and coherent functions at discourse level.On one hand, cohesion can be achieved through various cohesive devices,which include reference,reiteration and collocation.On the other hand,metaphor can build coherence either by means of entailment or by highlighting different aspects of one concept or different concepts.Chapter Five is the key part of the whole thesis.It makes an exploration of the significance of the cohesive and coherent functions of conceptual metaphor in English reading teaching.A series of sample texts selected from A New English Course(Level 4) are analyzed.In order to make a concrete illustration,two case studies which are also from A New English Course(Level 4) are presented to testify the implications of the textual functions of conceptual metaphor for teaching English reading. Chapter Six summarizes the whole thesis,pointing out the implications,limitations as well as the prospects for further research.