Bo Yu In The English Chapter Of Coherent Mechanism And Meaning Construction

Megametaphor is a complicated rhetoric means to apply metaphors in chains and clusters within the text. It mainly involves two ways of representation: one is to delineate the same tenor with a succession of vehicles, the other is to depict a series of tenors with a string of vehicles.Presently, only a few scholors have ever conducted some research into this topic to a limited degree. Compared to the international craze about metaphor, megametaphor is still left obscure and neglected. The previous studies about it are only confined to its rhetorical functions and stylistic effects, but its deeper mechanism of the construction of meaning is seldom expounded. If megametaphor, as a form of textual metaphor, is not thoroughly and systematically analyzed, we cannot claim we have acquired a dependable cognition of metaphor.Therefore, based on the overview of the current findings, this paper attempts to make a more focused and intensive study about it. In light of the semantic structure, prepositional structure and cognitive model, the paper tries to elaborate the triggering mechanism of textual coherence and the process of semantic generation. And a tentative conclusion is reached: both semantic space and prepositional irradiation constructs the ontological coherence of megametaphor; both conceptual indexation and the iconicity of sentential sequence establish the mental coherence; and the integral interaction of the two attains the connotative coherence of megametaphor, and ultimately triggers complex meaning of it.