Metaphorical Explore

What is matephor? it seems to be such a difficult question that no one can give a definitive answer. People usually regard metaphor just as a rhetorical method ,from which you can not find the nature of it .But since the Aristotle's times, metaphor has drawn more and more attention from such different subjects and fields as semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive science ,etc. The study of metaphor has made so many great progresses that it has been looked on as a kind of cognitive and thought pattern.In this paper ,the author tries to find the process that how the metaphor works as a thought pattern. When we talk about metaphor ,we have to mention the great four theories whose appearance can explain the working mechanism of metaphor in a great degree, they are : the comparison theory (representative person is Aristotle);the substitution theory(the representative person is Quintilian);the interaction theory(the representative persons are Black;Richards,Lakoff and Johnson); the blending theory(Fauconnier).The first two theories can be seen to study metaphor from the rhetorical perspective;the other two theories can be seen to study metaphor from the cognitive perspective.With the development of metaphor studies, metaphor also attracts the interest of the scholars specializing in other subjects. Here ,the author also wants to give some introduction about the the explanation of the working mechanism of metaphor given by these scholars, at last ,there will be some description about the application of metaphor.