A Cognitive Study Of Female Metaphors In Book Of Poetry:Independent Metaphors And Dependent Metaphors

From the phenomena of matriarchal society and patriarchal society in China, we can find: women, other than men, used to be the dominant role of the whole society; however, they also used to become subservient to men. How can we interpret the specific social status of women in ancient China? The author thinks that Book of Poetry is a very good research template, which is seen as a mirror of social life in ancient dynasties.Meanwhile, Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory give us a cognitive view to analyze metaphor; they put forward conceptual metaphor theory and regard it as a matter of understanding one thing in terms of another. Wen Xu(2003) once emphasized the importance of the systematization in conceptual metaphors and classified it into two categories. The first one is the inner systematization of one conceptual metaphor, and the second one is the systematization among conceptual metaphors. That is to say, we should pay attention to the inner relation of one conceptual metaphor, as well as the external relation between one conceptual metaphor and any other conceptual metaphors.According to the female metaphors collected, the author classify them into two categories: independent metaphors and dependent metaphors in Book of Poetry, aiming at finding the answers for following questions:(1) What are female metaphors like in Book of Poetry;(2) What characteristics can be found from female metaphors in Book of Poetry;(3) How can the characteristics of female metaphors be explained in terms of conceptual metaphors.And the main findings are listed as follow: There exist plenty of female metaphors in Book of Poetry, which always take natural things as source domains. Things, such as plants, animals and waters, are directly used by poets to describe female, female’s out-looking, female’s body parts and female’s love. And female metaphors in Book of Poetry, always together with male metaphors, tend to show us the gender interaction. The female metaphors can be classified into two categories: independent metaphors and dependent metaphors. In the independent metaphors, female’s out-looking is always a hot topic in the source domains. In the dependent metaphors, female metaphor, together with male metaphor, indicate gender status: women have lower status in ancient time; they always became the dependency of male, they give all of themselves in love and marriage. However, because of men’s polygamous nature and polygamy rule, they are always betrayed or deserted by men.In the independent metaphor, the one-one mapping process directly helps find a common topic---female’s appearance in the female metaphors in Book of Poetry. In ancient China female’s status in family and social life is always low. They can be judged and negated by male on the basis of their appearance optionally. And because of polygamous males, they are always abandoned when their appearance are not as charming as before after years of overwork in family. In the dependent metaphor(female-male metaphor, female-other thing metaphor), we can find the gender interaction from the interaction of two source domains. In female-male metaphor, female plays as the appendage or server of male or male’s family; in female-other thing metaphor(love relationship, husband’s mistress), no matter how faithful the wife present to be in her family, they cannot escape from a misfortune of polygamy.