A Metaphtonymic Cognitive Approach To The Dragon Idioms

The researches abroad on metaphors are always on the base of English idioms and they’re also the research hotspot of cognitive metaphor. Gradually in the domestic more and more scholars devote their energies to the study of cognitive metaphor of idioms. But there are few of research works on the "Dragon" idioms, further on, let alone the studies on the perspective of metaphor and metonymy. This paper is intended to use conceptual metaphor theory, conceptual metonymy theory and the implicit metonymy theory as the theoretical basis, using the interdisciplinary method and the way of combination of describing and explaining, on the perspective of metaphor—metonymy continuum. The concepts of metaphor and metonymy involved in this paper mainly refer to broad cognitive significance, rather than a narrow rhetorical significance. Firstly, this paper analyzes the dragon image, and then divided into single dragon image and dual image according to the standard of the number of animal imagery in parallel with the "dragon" in the "Dragon" idiom. The dual image of the "Dragon" idioms occupies a larger proportion. And they can be grouped in three types according to the difference of rank, homogeneous relationship and combination of myths. The donor domain of the "Dragon" idiom can be divided into three types. But without the join of related context and the basis of experience, the meaning of the donor domain can’t be distinguished clearly which is complimentary sense or derogatory sense. On the contrary, with the join of related context and the basis of experience, the meaning of target domain can be distinguished clearly which is complimentary sense or derogatory sense. Thus, which is available, the judgments of target domain of idioms are not only with the help of Morpheme meaning. The Morpheme meaning is one way of bridging. Then, with the theory of metaphor-metonymy continuum, Goossens’Criteria for the classification that including metaphor from metonymy and metonymy within metaphor and the source of the dragon idioms, they had got a further exploration which reveal the process of metaphor and metonymy, from its formation mechanism and its deep significance in the formation of a series of operational procedures and related judgments generation to access to the idiom of the character for dragon cognitive justifications and new research points of view.