Meaning Construction Of The Emotional Metaphor On Taste Words From The Perspective Of Category Theory

The sense of taste is the most familiar feeling and original experience in people’s daily life. In the development of human civilization, people gradually form a system of the relatively complete taste words in order to express all kinds of feelings and emotions. By categorization people can think more rigorous and logically, and classify things more effectively and reasonably. The metaphorical expression of the taste words implies that the image of the specific taste words belonging to source domain is mapped onto the abstractly emotional domain through similarities. The taste concept can be used to deepen and enrich the language expression. People can flexibly use the metaphorical language to convey what they would like to express. Most of the previous researches on the taste words focus on the aspects of vocabulary, comparison and cultural differences. Therefore, on the basis of the category theory and metaphor theory, this paper studies the colorful emotions in people’s inner world through the taste words both in English and in Chinese and how all kinds of the emotional metaphor meanings are constructed.This paper mainly studies the meaning construction of the emotional metaphor on taste words. Based on the category theory and metaphor theory, the taste words, including "酸", "sour", "甜", "sweet", "苦", "bitter", "辣,"hot", are taken as research subjects. The method of cognitive mechanism of metaphor is adopted. The mechanism exists when the similarities of two domains in different categories form mapping. Through the mapping, the metaphorical meanings in the target domain are embodied by the words in the source domain. With this method, the taste words are constructed with rich emotional meanings.The major findings are summarized from the following three aspects in the thesis.The first one is that meanings of the taste in the different levels are decided by the cognitive mode of people, specifically speaking, they are determined by the cognitive mode of the category.The second one is that the extension and expansion of meanings both in English taste words and in Chinese taste words have the features of metaphor, which are constructed by the mapping and double image.The third one is that the complicated, subtle and rich emotions in people’s inner world and the meaning extension of the taste words have the same feature of metaphor, as well as many similarities, which are helpful to build more meanings of the emotional metaphor both in English taste words and in Chinese taste words.The research topic has certain significance and value in both theory and practice. In theory, the paper enriches the metaphor theory and category theory. In practice, it helps to understand the taste words and use them as well as improve learners’translation level between English and Chinese. At the same time, it enriches the emotional expressions, which are based on the taste words and provides a lot of entertainment for people.