A Study Of The Metaphor As Reflected In Verbal Humor

Metaphor has been a traditional hot topic discussed and studied by linguists of alltimes. Their study is basically limited to the study of figurative speech and the literaryform. In the1970s, researchers of the metaphor began to carry out an in-depth studyfrom the perspective of cognition. This thesis aims to explore the metaphors used inverbal humor and to reveal the governing rules applied there. For such purpose, verbalhumor data from the popular U.S. sitcom How I Met Your Mother is collected.The study in this thesis is based on the conceptual metaphor theory proposed byAmerican linguists G. Lakoff and M. Johnson in their collaborative book The MetaphorsWe Live By (1980). In the book, they put forward the idea that metaphor is not only afigurative speech or literary form, but also a thinking pattern of human beings. Based onLakoff and Johnson’s classifications of metaphor, this study investigates the structuralmetaphor, the orientational metaphor and the ontological metaphor as applied in thesitcom How I Met Your Mother.This thesis is made up of five parts:Part one is the general introduction to the thesis. It introduces the wide functions,popularity of metaphor as well as the close relations between metaphor and language,and it also simply introduces the research object How I Met Your Mother. On the basisof the above introduction, the significance of this thesis is to further enrich the researchof conceptual metaphor, to give aid to subtitle translators, and to help English learnersto know foreign cultures and social life. Therefore, the author further gives out theobjective of this research, which is to explore how verbal humor is realized viaconceptual metaphor.Part two introduces the beginning, development as well as the turning point ofmetaphor. The earliest metaophorical research appears in Aristotle’s work Poetics andRhetoric. Afterwards, I. A. Richards put forward the Interaction Theory which is futherdeveloped by Black M.. Then Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor becomes theturning point of metaphorical research. Besides, the author explains in detail the reseachon verbal humor in American TV series both in the west and in China and the researchin conceptual metaphor both in the west and in China..Part three is the theoretical framework of the thesis. It introduces three mainconcepts in conceptual metaphor, that is, source domain and target domain, mapping as well as constancy hypothesis. Besides, this part also introduces the classification ofconceptual metaphor, structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontologicalmetaphor.Part four is the main body of this thesis. The author lists10examples of verbal humors thatexist in the American TV series How I Met Your Mother. Three structural metaphors are concludedfrom the examples: UNDERSTANDING IS HEARING, EMOTION IS TEMPERATURE and LIFEIS A JOURNEY. Verbal humors that contain orientational metaphors, ontological metaphors are alsoanalyzed. According to the analysis, the author finds out how humorous effect is realized throughconceptual metaphor.Part five is the conclusion of the thesis. First of all, the research of this thesis issimply concluded and it is pointed out that the research of this thesis makes greatcontributions to English learners, subtitle translators as well as western culture learners.Secondly, the author also points out the drawbacks and weaknesses because of thelimited corpus collected and the non-specific research because of the single theory, onthe basis of which the author puts forward some suggestions to further research.