A Study On The Cognitive Features Of HEART In Xi You Ji

Metaphor is an omnipresent phenomenon of language. The study of metaphor,which has been the concern for linguists, witnesses a long history of over2000years.Metaphor is traditionally thought as a figure of speech in literature. There exist threemajor theories of metaphor in the history of metaphor study, namely ComparisonTheory, Substitution Theory and the Interaction Theory, which all hold that metaphoris a kind of ornament of language. In the early1980s, Lakoff and Johnson publishedtheir work Metaphors we live by, which initiated a revolution of the metaphoricalresearch. They claim metaphor is pervasive in every aspect of our life, not only inlanguage but in thinking and action. To a large extent, metaphors rely on theconceptualization of our experience, especially on physical experience. HEART is oneof the most important organs in human body, thus it is meaningful to select HEART asthe subject of the study. Besides, as one of the most classical works of Chineseliterature, Xi You Ji is not only highly rewarded by the literary scholars, but alsodeeply loved by the readers. It contains lots of cultural elements with Chinesecharacteristics, among which HEART is one of them, with a high frequency of1471times. Therefore, it is an innovative and significant step to apply the metaphoricalstudy of HEART to the great novel Xi You Ji.Firstly, the history of metaphor study is briefly reviewed and the background ofthe thesis and some major theories on metaphor are presented. Secondly, the thesisprovides a specific idea of the theoretical background—Conceptual Metaphor Theory,in which the cross-domain mapping, target domain, source domain, the types ofconceptual metaphors and the body-part metaphorization are introduced. It is knownthat cross-domain mapping plays a crucial role in creation of metaphors, as it is theworking mechanism of conceptual metaphors, which can be treated as a mappingfrom a source domain to a target domain. Every mapping is a fixed series ofontological correspondences between entities in a source domain and that in a target domain, and it is partial. Thirdly, it analyzes the cognitive features of HEARTmetaphors in Xi You Ji from the perspective of conceptual metaphor. The analysis iscarried out from three aspects, namely the mapping from HEART to concrete domain,mappings from concrete domain to human HEART and mappings from abstractdomain to HEART. HEART is used as a source domain as well as a target domain. Asa source domain, the attribute of position is mapped onto other concrete objects.When as a target domain, HEART is viewed as something touchable with differentproperties, for various properties of human or other objects possess have been mappedonto HEART. Metaphorical mappings are based on body experience. In the process ofmappings from HEART domain to other non-human domain, people are able to formand express new concepts. On contrary, the mapping from other domains to HEARTis helpful for people to have a better understanding and expression of themselves andrelative objects.This thesis intends to apply the Conceptual Metaphor Theory to analyzingHEART metaphors in Xi You Ji, aiming to find out the features of HEART metaphorsin the novel and explore its types and ways of its function system. In this thesis,HEART metaphors in Xi You Ji will be classified, discussed and analyzed, which is toexplore the cognitive features and the construction rules of HEART in a more accurateway. It provides us with insights about the function of metaphor in human cognitionof the outside world, a new study perspective of literature works, especially the greatancient Chinese works Xi You Ji, as well as making a certain contribution to theintercultural communication.