A Study On Coherence Of Poetic Text From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor

Since the 1960s, the study of metaphor has shifted from the traditional study of figure of speech to a multidisciplinary study which includes philosophy, psychology, linguistic, etc. Among volumes of works on metaphors, the book Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980 can be regarded as a milestone in the study of metaphors. In their book, they have discussed and analyzed the metaphor concept system existing in human mind, and the theory they created has stimulated much multi-dimensional enquiry into conceptual metaphor. Some scholars have begun to make a study on metaphors on a textual level and analyze the coherent functions of conceptual metaphor in texts from different perspectives.On the basis of Lakoff and Johnson'Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this thesis makes a study on conceptual metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and text analysis in order to explore the coherence function of conceptual metaphors in poetic texts. By citing the three samples the author makes an analysis of these poetic texts on the two levels:the metaphorical level and the textual level. The result proves that conceptual metaphors penetrate the three poetic texts from the beginning to the end and make the poetic texts coherent in the surface and deep structures.This thesis falls into five parts. Chapter One is an introduction which presents a brief review of some important metaphor theories. Chapter Two focuses on the conceptual metaphor study from different perspectives and on the analysis of text and textual coherence. Chapter Three explores the role of conceptual metaphor in poetic texts. Chapter Four is the sample analysis. Chapter Five is the conclusion for the whole thesis.