Textual Functions Of Conceptual Metaphor And Chinese Reading Teaching

Metaphor is pervasive in everyday life. It is a basic understanding of the way.The study of metaphor can be traced back to ancient Greece, Aristotle. Traditionally,metaphor has been viewed as one of the rhetorical devices. With the development ofpsychology and cognitive linguistics, modern researchers recognize that the metaphoris not only a common rhetorical device, but also a characteristic or mechanism whichestablishes relationships among different things. Lakoff and Johnson proposedconceptual metaphor theory. They believe that metaphor is a way of thinking, actionand expression of a system of thought. Although there are many scholars from acognitive point of view in-depth research on metaphor at present, it is unusual thatstudies the operation of the metaphor and its function in the discourse level. In fact,Metaphor is an effective strategy of a group of articles as an important foundation forthe concept of human tissue, which plays an important role in the discourseconstruction. Metaphor is a structure mapping systematically and partly from thesource domain to the target domain in nature, which understands a thing throughanother thing. Therefore, the conceptual metaphor makes of systematic and coherentcharacteristics. It’s essential character is given the textual cohesion and coherencefunction of metaphor. As a discourse strategy, the mapping among chunks formed theinteraction between the conceptual domains, expands the discourse structure as themapping mode. The unifying force of metaphor can make the implication of themetaphor mapping from source domain to the target domain, and then metaphor canbe extended on the discourse level. The systematic lexical cohesion network can beformed in discourse by the metaphorical extension, and enhances the coherence of thetext on this account.This thesis attempts from the perspective of metaphor to analyze discourse, whichaims at combing language metaphor phenomenon, and analyzing the operationmechanism of conceptual in the discourse and the discourse construction function ofmetaphor. Based on the above analysis, this thesis is intended to make reader canstand in favor of commanding elevation of interpretation of discourse analysis anddialysis its meaning. In order to investigate into the textual functions of conceptualmetaphor in Chinese reading teaching, these theses employs PEP middle schooltextbooks for the material and select some texts as examples from those books.Through the concrete case analysis, the importance of cohesion and coherence functions of conceptual metaphor is further confirmed in Chinese reading teachingand summarize, the specific ways which metaphor plays a role. This thesis consists offive chapters. Chapter one serves as an introduction, introducing the critical literaturereview, which is concerned with discourse analysis at home and abroad as well asstudies on metaphor, and topic significance of the thesis selected. Chapter Two isdevoted to the conceptual metaphor theory, including the definition of conceptualmetaphor, systemic, similarity and interactivity. Chapter Three presents a study withsample analysis to show how conceptual metaphor performs the cohesive andcoherent functions at discourse level. Chapter Four is the key part of the whole thesis.It makes an exploration of the significance of the cohesive and coherent functions ofconceptual metaphor in Chinese reading teaching selected two specific discourses asan example. Chapter Five summarizes the whole thesis, pointing out the implicationsof this study in Chinese reading teaching, limitations as well as the prospects forfurther research.