A Survey Of Metaphors In Li Bai’s Farewell Poems From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

The study of metaphor can be traced back to Ancient Greek times. Traditionally, metaphor is thought to be a figure of speech, an ornament in literary works. In1980, Lakoff and Johnson put forward conceptual metaphor theory in their book Metaphors We Live By, arguing that metaphor is not merely a matter of language, but also a matter of thought. Metaphor is ubiquitous in daily language and thought. Metaphor involves the understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, by mapping from the source domain onto the target domain based on our physical and cultural experience. Lakoff and Johnson (1980,2003) classify conceptual metaphors into ontological metaphors, orientational metaphors, and structural metaphors. Ontological metaphors are sub-divided into entity and substance metaphors, container metaphors, and personification. Entity and substance metaphors refer to the conceptualization of abstract concepts based on our experience of physical objects and substances, providing a way of referring, quantifying, and identifying certain abstract concept such as inflation. In container metaphors, we project our own in-out orientation onto other physical objects, and impose boundaries on shapeless concepts such as event, action, activity, and state. Personification is the most obvious ontological metaphor, in which the nonhuman entity is specified as being a person with human’s characteristic, motivation, and activity. Orientational metaphors refer to the organization of a whole system of concepts with respect to one another based on our experience of spatial orientation and cultural experience. Structural metaphors refer to structuring one concept metaphorically in terms of another. Conceptual metaphor theory illustrates metaphor as a cognitive tool comprehensively for the first time. Metaphors prevail in our daily language and define the way we think and perform. Metaphor is coherent with culture, reflecting the value system and culture in a specific community.Li Bai is the greatest romantic poet in the Tang Dynasty of China, leaving us about one thousand poems. He writes about landscape poems, farewell poems, frontier fortress poems and many other poems. Farewell poems play an important role in Chinese history, providing a way for understanding cultural heritage, geographic features, and social conditions of ancient China. Farewell poems are a good resource for learning Chinese as a foreign language, in the sense that they are embedded in ancient Chinese culture.This paper is a survey of metaphors in Li Bai’s farewell poems from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory. According to the classification of conceptual metaphor, the author discovers seventeen conceptual metaphors in Li Bai’s farewell poems. There are twelve ontological metaphors such as AFFECTION IS SUBSTANCE, THE MOON IS HUMAN, and THE POLITICAL CAREER IS A CONTAINER and so on. There are four structural metaphors including HUMAN IS PLANT, THE POLITICAL AMBITIONS ARE BIRDS, RETIRE IS CLOUD, and VIVIOUSNESS IS CLOUD. There is one orientational metaphor RETIER IS UP. All these metaphors are based on people’s experience, reflecting the social and cultural conditions of the Tang Dynasty.Li Bai’s farewell poems are rich in excellent descriptions and fertile imaginations, which are good corpora for learning Chinese as a foreign language. This paper provides a list of conceptual metaphors in Li Bai’s farewell poems, hoping to be useful for foreigners who learn Chinese and appreciate Chinese culture.