The Linguistic Study On The Metaphors In Du Fu's Poems

The world we live in is full of metaphors. In other words, we are surrounded by various creative metaphors in our daily life. The thesis aims to interpret the phenomenon of metaphors in the Du Fu's poems so as to explore the cognitive mechanism existing in the intepretation of the metaphors in Du Fu's poems. This thesis attempts to provide a reasonable paradigm of meaning intepretation for understanding the metaphors in Du Fu's peoms.The word"metaphor", originating from Greek, means"proceeding from the one to the other". Its literal sense is transfering one object to another object. Metaphor has long regarded as a kind of figure of speech in the academic world. Since the 1980s, metaphor is no longer just seen as a rhetorical means. It is also seen as a way of human thinking. Although some scholars have begun to analyze the process of the metaphor construction and its interpretation from the perspective of cognitive science, the metaphors in Du Fu's poems are less studied from the Cognitive view in the academic world at present. In the paper, the selected corpus from Du Fu's poems is also a breakthrough in the past studies which treat metaphor as a speech of figure and attempt to analyze these materials from the cognitive point of view. Based on the previous studies achievements, this thesis concludes and summarizes the metapphors in Du Fu's poems according to conceptual metaphor. Meanwhile, by taking advantage of the conceptual integration theory, this thesis analyzes the metaphors so as to find out the cognitive process of the metaphors in Du Fu's poems. Thus, it opens up a new way of better understanding and appreciation of poetry.Chinese poets are good at using metaphors to express their poem contents. In order to more clearly understand metaphors in Du Fu's poems, we first analyze the structural metaphors, spatial metaphors and ontological metaphors; then, we choose the poems about horses as the representative of Du Fu'poems and analyze them by using conceptual integration theory. Besides, a comparative study of Du Fu's poems and the poems written by Li Bai, Li He, is conducted so as to find out the uniqueness of the metaphors in Du Fu's poems.This thesis is composed of seven chapters:Chapter 1 is introduction. It briefly explains the phenomenon of metaphor, the rationality and motivations for the present study and the topic of the thesis. At last, the theoretical framework, the research goals, significances and methodologies adopted in this thesis are laid out.Chapter 2 is the literature review which reviews and comments on the previous studies of metaphor.Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework which introduces Lakoff's conceptual metaphor theory and Fauconnier's conceptual integration theory.Chapter 4 concludes and summarizes Du Fu'poems according to conceptual metaphor theory.Chapter 5 applies the metaphorical network model to the typical metaphors in Du Fu's poems.Chapter 6 analyzes the unique metaphors in Du Fu'poems.The last chapter is the conclusion, which concludes the whole analysis of the thesis, points out the limitations of the thesis and its significances for further study.