The Linguistic Interpretation On Li Shangyin's Peoms

The famous poet Li Shangyin in the late Tang Dynasty was a great master of poetry, whose poems represented the highest achievements of that time. His poems plays an important role in the whole course of development of poetry. Poems created by his unique style opened up a new realm of Tang poetry, attracting researchers to pay their attention for thousands of years. This paper aims to study Li Shangyin's poems, with the conceptual metaphor and conceptual integration theory as its theoretical framework. Combined with the background of late Tang Dynasty, the poet's special life experience and personal psychology, this paper aims to analyze the styles composition of his poems, which are"profound in substance and beautiful in style"and"exquisite and delicate in emotions", from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. It does a comprehensive and systematic analysis on the imagery and the allusion of his poems so as to reveal their unique aesthetic styles of the "hazy ambiguity, deep sadness, artistic mood and the perfect integration of flowery language and bleak and desolate images". The main text is divided into three chapters, plus introduction and conclusion for a total of five parts.IntroductionIn the introduction Li Shangyin's life experience and his status in poetry are briefly introduced. Besides, literature review about the study of his poems is summarized and analyzed.Chapter 1 Theoretical FrameworkConceptual metaphor theory and conceptual integration theory are the important metaphor theories in contemporary cognitive linguistics. Metaphor is not just a rhetoric phenomenon of language, but also is a more important cognitive phenomenon, which is an indispensable cognitive tool in human conceptual systems. In essence, it is a cognitive activity for human beings to understand unfamiliar things by using familiar things. Cognition is the result that people perceive and experience the objective world, a product of interaction between people and the world. Cognitive system which originates from cognitive experience is the psychological basis for the use of metaphor. Meanwhile, metaphor is an important tool of human'abstract thinking. It promotes the development of cognition. Conceptual metaphor is divided into three categories: spatial metaphor, ontological metaphor and structural metaphor. Conceptual integration theory makes up for the deficiency of the conceptual metaphor theory, which adequately explains metaphor. The establishment of the mental space in the interpretation of the words, the online operation of the mapping between them and synthetic mechanisms are the core issues of the conceptual integration theory. The process of conceptual integration is mainly dependent on projection, mapping and dynamic creative construction to form hierarchical structures so as to promote the formation of new concepts. As a general cognitive process, conceptual integration theory provides a powerful cognitive tool to correctly understand images and allusion in classical Chinese poems.Chapter 2 Analysis about the images in Li Shangyin's poems by using the conceptual integration theoryImage is a of unique national notion in classical Chinese poetry, which can convey profound meaning with short form. It possesses both the objective characteristics and properties of the object images and the subjective characteristics and properties given by the creation subject. In poem images, Li Shangyin preferred to choose those splendid, cool, delicate and exquisite objects which can best express his mind, and thus his poems take on the aesthetic style of mixed emotions and images. Li Shangyi's poems'images can be divided into two categories: physical images and virtual images. The individual features of the poetic image are: delicate and exquisite of emotions, flowery and splendid wordings, bleak and desolate scences, illusionary and imaginary impressions.The use of conceptual integration theory to understand these images is not only out of rational understanding, but also out of the appeciation of art.Chapter 3, Analysis of the allusions in Li Shangyin's peoms by using of conceptual integration theoryThe proper use of allusions in poety can make poems refined, elegant. Besides, because of the stories of the allusions themselves possessing their own historical contents and contexts, the uses of them in poetry can also make the poems implicit, touching.The numerous allusions well used by Li Shangyin in his poems make his poems appear to be more subtle and elegant and thus form their own unique aesthetic style. Now, more than 600 poems created by Li Shangyin exist. They can be basically divided into three categories by artistic styles: the first category is love poetry and untitled poetry; the second is a political poetry and historical poetry; the third is Chanting Poetry , which use a lot of allusions. Using the conceptual integration theory to analyze and understand these allusions can help us understand the historical connotation and specific meanings of these allusions given by the poet, which has deepened our understanding of the aesthetic understanding of Li Shangyin's poems.ConclusionThe special contribution of Li Shangyin to the poetry is that he creates a fresh, delicate expression form of poetry. This form covered with special sentimental beauty shines a more touching and glorious charm. This thesis does a comprehensive and systematic analysis on the images and allusions used in his poems, aiming to find a unique and important breakthrough for further study.