A Study On Poetic Metaphor From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Since the ancient times,the moon has been closely related to the poetry,especially the ancient Chinese poetry and full of pictures and imagination to poets.Expressing emotions and nostalgia,reflecting on old times,and longing for somebody by looking at the moon are main themes in the poems singing the moon.And the moon image has almost become the perfect carrier to bear emotions for ancient Chinese poets.The moon in ancient Chinese poetry can be regarded as a kind of symbol,atmosphere,emotional bonds as well as cultural tradition and aesthetic taste.It inherited the classics in poetic culture as a part of precious Chinese literary heritage.If the ancient Chinese poetry was considered to be the essence of classical Chinese literature,then the moon was the soul of ancient Chinese poetry.Studying the ancient Chinese poems singing the moon is a good choice to enter and know the ideology,emotion,spirit of Chinese people.The previous research on the moon in ancient Chinese poetry by scholars was mainly about the themes,artistic techniques,writing style,images,and aesthetic preference,seldom in the aspects of philosophy,comparative literature,and psychology,while almost blank in linguistics specially in cognitive linguistics perspective,which will be an key approach in this thesis.It is the poetry that contains the most complicated and creative expression of metaphors.Therefore,the poets employed poetic metaphors to give poems multiple levels of meaning and connotations,specify the abstract meanings,inspire the readers' imagination and reflection to understand the deep and multiple-level of meaning.In this thesis,the author will try to discuss the process of the meaning construction and understanding of the moon image in poetic metaphor in ancient Chinese poetry from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.By applying the conceptual integration theory in cognitive linguistics,the author will try to analyze the poetic metaphors about the moon images in ancient Chinese poetry and explore the emotions and thoughts of the poets delivered by the poetic metaphors about the moon to broaden the studying field of poems singing the moon,using the ancient Chinese literature works as the corpus of this thesis to demonstrate the ubiquity of cognitive metaphors.Meanwhile,a relatively new angle and method is provided to the study of poetic metaphors.Conceptual integration theory,proposed by these two linguists Gills Fauconnier and Mark Turner,has complete networks,which function independently according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles.Four mental spaces,two input spaces,one generic space and one blended space,compose fundamental operation of this theory.In blending,structures from spaces are selectively projected to a separate"blended space".Through the process of composition,completion and elaboration,the blend develops structures that are not provided by the inputs.By the theory,the hidden cognitive mechanism involved in the comprehending the moon's metaphors in ancient Chinese poetry can be revealed.The research proves that conceptual integration theory has great explanatory power in cognitive interpretation of the moon's metaphors in ancient Chinese poetry compared with conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff.And it also proves that running blending is the universal cognitive mechanism to human beings to produce the maximum meaning comprehension.