An Event-domain Cognitive Model-based Study Of Conceptual Metaphor

From the cognitive point of view, conceptual metaphor is not just a linguistic device for rhetoric proposes, but an important cognitive pattern for people to conceptualize the external reality. Metaphor is closely related to thought and is vital for people to structure the conceptual system. So people’s conceptual system and the daily language that manifests it are fundamentally metaphorical in nature.Cognitive linguists apply embodied philosophy as the foundation of conceptual metaphor research, and based on the embodied philosophy and the research of the scholars on linguistic phenomena and conceptual metaphor, the domestic famous cognitive linguist Wang Yin (2005) proposes the Event-domain Cognitive Model (ECM). ECM is a universal but very important cognitive model for people to experience and understand the practical world according to the cognition of the events within. ECMs are abstract structures with both dynamic and static elements in different levels, holding the tension of constructing other concepts. Thus based on the coincidence of structure between the source domains of conceptual metaphors and ECMs and their shared philosophical background, along with the experiential and constructive properties that ECMs hold, the construction of ECMs is significant in providing the source domains for conceptual metaphors, and therefore is significant in the construction of conceptual metaphors.From the outlook of embodied philosophy, taking Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and ECM into account, and through an interpretation and application of the two theories in cognitive linguistics, the thesis sequentially offers an ECM-based study of the source of source domain and construction of conceptual metaphor.Upon a detailed theoretical analysis and quotation of a large number of metaphorical illustrations, the thesis justifies that ECM, as one of the fundamental cognitive patterns for people to experience and understand the practical world, plays an integral part in providing the source domain for the conceptual metaphor in specific metaphorical context, and accordingly in the construction of the conceptual metaphor. Consequence of such an integrated study offers a new perspective to the study of conceptual metaphor, and therefore has a certain extent in enriching the conceptual metaphor research.