A Metonymic Approach To Chinese Horse Idioms

This thesis is an attempt to study Chinese horse idioms from theperspective of conceptual metonymy and ultimately aims at finding outthe underlying cognitive mechanisms of the formation and understandingof Chinese horse idioms.This thesis mainly deals with three questions: firstly, what are themapping types of Chinese horse idioms? Secondly, what kind of semanticfields horse idioms are mapped to? Thirdly, from the perspective ofconceptual metonymy, how Chinese horse idioms are formed and arethere other motivations interacting with metonymy?This research analyzed Chinese horse idioms and tried to give amore detailed analysis of its formation and working mechanism. It isfound that: firstly, horse idioms are about three major fields: military,transportation and communication and self-deprecation. Secondly, themost important motivation of horse idioms is metonymy. Six mainmetonymic mappings are summarized in this thesis. They are PART FORWHOLE, WHOLE FOR PART, STATIC THINGS FOR DYNAMICACTIONS, DYNAMIC ACTION FOR STATIC SITUATION ORQUALITY, CATEGORY FOR ITS CHARACTERISTICS and ACTIONFOR ITS RESULT. Other motivations are principle of economy,culture-specific issue, physical experience and general knowledge, whichproves that the formation of horse idioms is not arbitrary but motivated. Thirdly, this research reveals that metonymy is pervasive in our daily life.This study provides convincing examples and explanation forconceptual metonymy theory. It effectively proved that metonymy is notonly a kind of figure of speech, but also a kind of cognitive tool forpeople to have a better understanding of the world around. Study onidioms also has great importance for Chinese teaching and providesimplications for teaching Chinese as a foreign language. This study canalso show a brighter way for translation practice.