The Metaphorical Patterns In The Language Of Shijing

The study on metaphor has penetrated every aspect of human language. Shijing (The Book of Ancient Poetry), as the oldest poetry in China, which has a great effect on our language and way of thinking, contains abundant metaphorical expressions rarely noticed. Therefore, the study of metaphors in Shijing may open up a new insight into Cognitive Metaphor Theory (CMT) and shed light on it. This article discusses some basic questions about CMT by examining linguistic evidences from Shijing.The first chapter is an academic review of related studies. It mainly discusses limitations of the present metaphor study and introduces the use of corpora. The second chapter elaborates some of Lakoff's theories about metaphor, challenging the plausibility of experientialism and the systematicity of metaphor. The third chapter analyses some metaphorical expressions in Shijing from a culture-oriented perspective. These seemingly pure metaphors are, in fact, from metonymies, which are called metaphors from metonymies by Louis Goossens. The fourth chapter is about the semantic changes of metaphorical idioms in Shijing from a diachronic view. By comparing it with the semantic change of words, this paper finds similarities and differences between them. The last chapter is the conclusion of this paper. Areas for further study are pointed out. Building a more systematic corpus for the metaphorical language of Shijing is necessary.