A Conceptual Integration Approach To The Flower's Imagery In Among The Flowers

In 1997,Conceptual Integration Theory is first systematically demonstrated by Fauconnier in Mapping in Thought and Language,and later in 2002,it is further developed by Fauconnier and Turner in The Way We Think.Besides,many other scholars including Chinese linguists also contribute a lot to the advancement of this theory.It is a theory that builds four mental spaces and takes three vital procedures to reveal the dynamic processes of on-line meaning construction of natural language and explore our psychological cognitive activities and mechanisms.Poetic imagery is an indispensable element in poetry creation,which conveys rich connotations and significant meanings.Since long,it has been treated as a common literary technique and studied through traditional literary analysis.But with the development of cognitive linguistics,especially the advancement of Conceptual Integration Theory,more and more scholars turn to study poetic imagery from the cognitive perspectives.Among the Flowers,as the earliest Chinese scholar's collection of Ci,reaches a high literary accomplishment and occupies an important position in Chinese literature history.It contains various types of poetic imagery,which include but are not limited to plant imagery,bird imagery and nature imagery.Both Chinese and foreign scholars have studied these poetic imagery with traditional methods and got a series of academic findings.However,cognitive analysis is rare to see among these studies,which is a great insufficiency in the explanation and comprehension of the various meanings delivered by the involved poetic imagery.This thesis chooses to focus on one representative poetic imagery in the book—— the flower's imagery,and it applies the conceptual integration approach to its analysis.At the very beginning,the author reads through the book word by word and takes advantage of some reference materials to identify and collect the lines including the flower's imagery.Then he builds a closed corpus to focus on the images of flowers that have integrated meanings.Next he studies these meanings and classifies them into five categories.Finally the author conducts case studies to analyze the meaning construction within the four conceptual integration networks.