A Cognitive Approach To The PLANT Metaphors In The Book Of Poetry

With Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory as its theoretical framework; this thesis makes a tentative analysis of the HUMAN BEINGS ARE PLANTS metaphors collected from The Book of Songs, an essential part of The Book of Poetry, the earliest existing Chinese anthology. The Book of Songs is the first part of the anthology, with the poems collected from all the states of the Chou Dynasty. The extensive sources and topics of the poems collected in The Book of Songs are of great value in reflecting the social, cultural and historical aspects of The Book of Poetry era.Researchers have taken enormous interest in researching this anthology. As to the metaphor studies of this anthology, many researchers failed to give clear standards of how they had identified the metaphors collected from the poems, which might reduce the studies to ambiguity at the outset. With respect to this specific demerit of the previous studies, the present thesis makes attempts to clarify the relationship between bi, xing techniques and metaphor. Based on this, this thesis further explores the HUMAN BEINGS ARE PLANTS metaphors collected from The Book of Songs. In this process, the author of the present thesis finds that LIFE CYCLE metaphors exclusively belong to the feminine metaphors, while metaphors used for males are mostly TREE metaphors. The author proposes that the lack of LIFE CYCLE metaphors for men is most probably evidence for women’s easily affected status and subordinate standing in family and in society of The Book of Songs period. In order to corroborate this assumption, brief analysis of why women were reduced to auxiliary positions in that era are given at the end of the corresponding chapter.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction of the thesis, including three subparts, namely, research background, briefing on the history of metaphor studies, significance of the study discussing the purpose or tentative goals of the present thesis, and the last part organization of the thesis, introducing the outlay of the thesis. Chapter Two presents a more detailed elaboration on the major linguistic theories emerging in the course of metaphor study as well as an overall review of studies metaphors in The Book of Poetry. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of the thesis, presenting a relatively elaborate introduction to the basic ideas of Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Chapter Four presents the methodology of the thesis, including research objectives and questions of the thesis, criteria the author of the thesis established for metaphor identification, and data collection and description. Chapter Five serves as the data analysis of the thesis, presenting an analysis and discussion of the PLANT metaphors, primarily the HUMAN BEINGS ARE PLANTS metaphors collected from The Book of Songs. The chapter presents an elaborate analysis of the category of the HUMAN BEINGS ARE PLANTS metaphors, then two subcategories of the metaphorical pattern, then a salient difference found through comparing the two subcategories and finally an analysis of the basis for the differences of the two subcategories as well as the author’s own interpretation of the difference. Chapter Six is the conclusion of the entire thesis.This thesis tentatively applies the modern cognitive linguistic theory in analyzing the traditional literary works, and through doing this, attempts to promote a better understanding of the classic Chinese literature works as well as get some meaningful implications from a new perspective.