A Cognitive Study Of Metaphors In Li Shangyin's Poems

In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson's co-work Metaphors We Live By shifts traditional-linguistic understanding of metaphor to a new perspective and from then on frees'. metaphor study from the shackles of traditional theory based on literature and rhetorics, hence the foundation of cognitive linguistics. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, breaking through the traditional viewpoints of metaphor study, by use of the conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory, this paper explores more about the metaphors in Li Shangyin's poetry, and provides a new paradigm for the cognitive understanding of metaphor in Chinese Tang Poetry. From. the article of Three classification methods of literal metaphor and its significance by Zhu Lin (2014) and different angles, including the sensory metaphor, abstract objective metaphor and conventionality of application and imagery attributes, I probed into the relationship between metaphor and imagery, to reveal the fact that no matter how Li Shangyin's poetry seems indigestible and how creative he uses his personalized metaphor, they are actually common thoughts we live by, just as great linguists Lakoff and Johnson claimed. As a result of the poet's tragic experiences, he applies common things to symbolizing his sentimental feelings, whether these feelings stem from his love experience, official careers or deep thoughts about life, they are nevertheless closely related with embodied similarity occurred in our daily interaction with the world. Thus we see the beauty of cognitive poetics. However, there still remain some problems with Li Shangyin's misty poems and pure chanting poems, and cognitive linguistics is still required to have literary study as excellent reference. I sincerely hope that this paper can get rid of and expand limited genre and language, to provide suggestions and a good example for the study of ancient Chinese poetry.