An Analysis In Metaphors In Cognitive Perspective

After more than two millenniums'debates metaphors make great advances from the mere function of a figure of speech to the tool of recognizing the world and forming thoughts. The advent of the book The Metaphor We Live By upraises the comprehension of metaphors to the cognitive level irrespective of the pure language level, metaphors are far from being the privilege of talented intellectuals only, but are the indispensable parts of our daily language, our language itself lives in metaphors.This paper is prone to analyze the traditional metaphors and complex novel metaphors in poetry from Yang's translation edition of A Dream of Red Mansion by the combination of both the Conceptual Metaphorical Theory and the Conceptual Blending Theory. In the novel the author models the characters and fates, heightens and predicts the happening of events, deepen the subject and strengthen the artistic appeal.The edition under analyzing in the paper is Yang's translation edition which preserves the original artistic features, the loyalty to the original style and diction, including the preciously resemblant metaphors, thus restores the intention and the way of thinking of the author in the original works. By the novel and coherent language which refreshes everything to readers, the poetry is the typical style of metaphors, the metaphors sequentially scattered in the poetry have hierarchical relationship, submetaphors scattered coherently and universally support the main metaphor of the poetry. The coherence is the uniqueness of metaphors in poetry which is shrouded in the identical culture background, by the culture background the metaphors in the poetry can be well explained. The essential factors of a metaphor commonly can be lost in the usage especially when they are applied in the poetry, the intention and artistic appeal of metaphors can be comprehended on the condition that the essential factors are restored.The paper makes the breakthrough by the combination of the Conceptual Metaphorical Theory and the Conceptual Blending Theory to explain and restore the original intention of the author in the novel through the projecting across the four mental spaces in order to provide the cognitive evidence in the deciphering the novel. Realizing the function and restraining of language expression erected by practical experiences in the cognitive perspective, metaphors can vividly deliver the author's intention with popularization and add extensive and profound artistic appeal and witness the profound language appeal and the literary value that provides much food for thought and stands careful reading in the world literature arena.