Function Of Conceptual Metaphor On The Coherence Of English Poems

Metaphor is fundamentally conceptual. It is a mapping between two conceptual domainsof meaning, a projection of a schematized pattern from a less abstract source domain onto amore abstract target domain. Thus, the nature of metaphor is to understand one thing in termsof another.Metaphor is one part of our conceptual system which dominates our thought, languageand behaviour. It is systematic from the mental level. Conceptual metaphor is a highgeneralization of people’s thoughts and feelings, which is an effective strategy forconstructing and reading poetry.This thesis uses conceptual metaphor as the main theory to research the role conceptualmetaphor plays in constructing discourse coherence, and combine the cognitive coherencetheory and conceptual metaphor theory from the cognitive metaphor aspect to analyze twopoems from Emily Dickenson and Shakespeare. This thesis will first of all identify themetaphors used in the two poems. With respect to the first poem, it will discuss howmetaphors are related to make poems coherent. Besides, it will analyze, in the second poem,the primary metaphor and the complex metaphors deriving from the former, to illustrate thatmetaphors used in poems fall into the conceptual system and make the poem coherent.In poetry, poets use source domain of conceptual metaphor as the vehicle, which is theimage we usually call. Through this, poets can illustrate abstract ideas. Every poem consistsof core metaphor that is superordinate and extended metaphor that is subordinate. Since poets’mind is systematic, these extended metaphors always constitute a metaphorical coherencewith the core metaphor. Thus, the whole text will be coherent.