A Metaphorical Approach To "Bi" And "Xing" In The Book Of Songs

Metaphor is traditionally regarded as a figure of speech since Aristotle more than2000years ago. Linguists didn’t begin to value metaphor as a cognitive tool and research itin a systematic way until the1980s. Conceptual metaphor theory developed by Lakoff andJohnson (1980) is most influential from then, which also marked that metaphor became acentral point in cognitive linguistics. They believe that metaphor is not merely a languagephenomenon, but, more importantly, it is closely related to human thoughts and ordinarylife. Metaphor is the process of organizing and constructing abstract and complex conceptsin terms of more concrete and familiar experience, which indicates that the humanconceptual system is largely metaphorical.“Fu”(赋),“Bi”(比) and “Xing”(兴) are three major techniques of expression in TheBook of Songs. Over the ages, scholars have done lots of researches on “Bi” and “Xing” inThe Book of Songs, mainly from the perspective of literature including rhetoric and image.Only a few scholars have analyzed them from the cognitive point of view, without aunified conclusion. This study analyzes “Bi” and “Xing” in The Book of Songs by utilizingcognitive metaphor theory.This paper finds that “Bi” and “Xing” in The Book of Songs are used metaphoricallyto inspire cognition, inviting audiences to link one thing or feeling to another thing orfeeling. According to the classification and comparison of “Bi” and “Xing”, we find, fromthe cognitive metaphorical perspective, differences between “Bi” and “Xing” are asfollows:(1) Mapping between the two domains in “Bi” is relatively direct and obviouswith a clear logical relation;“Xing” is classified into two types. The first only serves forinitiating the song and defining the rhythm. The other is used metaphorically to express thetrue meaning of poems while its production and working mechanism is more complicated.Grady’s primary theory is used to explain this kind of “Xing” from the perspective ofauthor’s degree of subjectivity and psychological reaction to experience.(2)“Bi” and“Xing” are produced through different ways of psychological association. As for “Bi”, theconcepts in the target domain often appear before the elements in the source domain. Butmetaphor in “Xing” juxtaposes what the speaker sees, hears, and does under certaincircumstances with what is inspired naturally, so the source domain and the target domain appear simultaneously. Besides, five major functions of “Bi” and “Xing” in The Book ofSongs are figured out as follows: rhetorical function, linguistic function including fillinglexical gaps and explanation, poetic function, cognitive function includingreconceptualization and argument by analogy, and social function including expressingemotional attitude. This study verifies the feasibility and applicability of cognitivemetaphor theory in understanding concepts, and reveals the cognitive significance of “Bi”and “Xing” in The Book of Songs.