A Study On Emotional Metaphor Based On Cognitive Interaction

Metaphor is a universal language phenomenon, which is used every minute and everywhere. During the past 2000 years since the Aristotle days, research in this field is always prevailing in foreign academe. According to Lakoff & Johnson (1980), metaphor is not just a form of rhetoric; it is also human's thinking mode, which participates in the entire process of human's cognition. Thenceforth, metaphor research has entered a period of "Metaphormania".Human's emotion and cognitive psychology are mutually influential and functional. Emotion is the most important human experience and to research about emotion is one of the basic missions of human's cognition. Human's emotions are rich and colorful, while they are also abstract and difficult to express. To express emotions vividly and visually, we usually have them metaphorized, which forms emotional metaphor. Emotional metaphor is the focus of metaphor research. Researchers abroad are mainly about emotional conceptions, while domestic researchers mainly commit themselves to study about cognition contrast of emotional metaphor between English and Chinese, and few of them mention the working mechanism of emotional metaphor. Therefore, to study about the working mechanism of emotional metaphor is both urgent and necessary.This thesis takes the perspective of Cognitive Interaction as a breakthrough point and makes qualitative research to emotional metaphor based on the guidance of related theories. Firstly, it discusses about the working mechanism and finds that the working mechanism of emotional metaphor is actually the Cognitive Interaction, which integrated semantic conflict, mapping and conceptual blending between the two objects. And then, a deeper research is made on ground of working mechanism in emotional metaphor-emotional embodiment. At last, it reveals the universality and cultural particularity characteristics of emotional metaphor between Chinese and English and holds that human's cognition is rooted in direct or indirect physical embodiment in our daily life, which should never be neglected. Emotional embodiment is just the representation of interaction between cognitive body (human) and cognitive object. This thesis demonstrates that the working mechanism of emotional metaphor is actually a Cognitive Interaction, which is based on the ground of emotional embodiment and integrated semantic conflict, mapping and conceptual blending. This is further complementary to metaphor and cognition theories. Furthermore, it could help readers to promote their sensitivity to emotional metaphors, even to languages in daily life and readings, and promote our communicating ability, while it also contributes to offer better revelatory effect in fields like translation, cross-cultural communications and vocabulary teaching.