English Metaphorical Thinking From The Perspective Conceptual Metaphor

Recently with the cognitive shift of the research on metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claim that metaphor is an indispensable tool people use to construct their conceptual system. Metaphor is not only a phenomenon of language but a kind of thought. Metaphor is conceptual in nature by using one kind of things to understand and experience another. In recent years, metaphormania has come to China. There are so many researches of conceptual metaphor (CM) in Chinese academia, ranging from theoretical researches on cognitive mechanism, characteristics and functions of CM to ones on CM in specific discourses of a variety, from the application of CMT to other relevant disciplines to contrastive studies of CM in different languages, and so on. While by now, most of these researches are in written discourse, only a few in spoken discourses. Even in spoken discourses, almost all of them put their emphasis on subtitle translation and comprehension of CM, few on the metaphorical thinking (MT) in terms of CM, let alone of culture elements underlying MT.This thesis, by applying Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) conducts a tentative study on the English MT in terms of CM in the spoken discourse--American sitcom Will and Grace, and further finds out the underlying cultural elements which construct and influence MT of American people. In this thesis,8episodes are randomly sampled from the total194ones from the scripts of Will and Grace, where370metaphorical expressions are selected, among which there are45belong to the scope of orientational metaphor,235to ontological metaphor,84to structural metaphor and6to novel metaphor.52CMs are elevated and their relevant MT are analysed, and the underlying cultural elements were dug out on the basis of the analysis of CM and MT.This thesis has reached the following conclusions:1) By applying the CMT,370metaphorical expressions are selected from the scripts of Will and Grace, among which there are45belong to the scope of orientational metaphor,235to ontological metaphor,84to structural metaphor and6to novel metaphor.2)52CMs are elevated on the basis of the selected metaphorical expressions, including12orientational metaphors,24ontological metaphors, and16structural metaphors. The author concludes that CM and MT are essentially the same thing; both of them are a way of viewing things in terms of another.3) By analysing English MT of American people in terms of CM, four characteristics of MT are confirmed, including universality and experience-based, creativity, imageability, and culture dependency and four main cultural elements constructing and influencing English MT of American people were dug out, including geographical environment, Capitalism notion, social conventions and spiritual life of American people.As to the significance, this thesis is valuable in the following aspects:Firstly, this thesis identifies the cognitive function of CM and applies the CMT to analyze the metaphorical expressions in one more spoken discourse--Will and Grace. It provides one more empirical research of CM to the family of CM researches. Secondly, by analysing the MT in terms of CM, this thesis confirms the relation between CM and MT from the cognitive perspective, and then can help further probe the relationship between language and thought to some extent. Thirdly, by figuring out the cultural elements constructing and influencing the English MT of American people, we can better understand the cultural difference and thinking pattern difference between American and Chinese people to further avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and master various intercultural situations better.