A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In The Textbooks Of Advance With English Published By Yilin Press

The studies of metaphor go a way back to 2000 years ago,but not until Lakoff and Johnson's ground-breaking works of Metaphor We Live By came out in 1980,has the metaphor been ushered into the cognitive field.Their opinions are supported by scholars home and abroad.As studies on metaphor have deepened,many people have paid attention to the application of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to high school English teaching and learning.However,little attention has been drawn to what conceptual metaphors students have internalized in the time of high school learning,how metaphors are presented to students,and how students use metaphors.These provide background for this thesis.It tries applying the Conceptual Metaphor Theory to study the 2011 version of Advance with English textbooks published by Yilin Press,which are one kind of the English textbooks for most high schools in China,and are the major source of language input for English learning.This set of books is featured with authentic language,rich content,and wide source of material.By studying these books,the thesis aims at answering the following questions:(1)What typical conceptual metaphors are used in the textbooks of Advance with English?(2)What are the imaginative metaphors these conceptual metaphors derived and their correlation with conceptual metaphors in the textbooks of Advance with English?To find the answers to these questions,this thesis adopts qualitative,quantitative analysis and case study.After combing through all the modules for at least three times,1014 metaphorical expressions are identified,and there are 673 ontological metaphors,98 orientational metaphors and 243 structural metaphors.The major conceptual metaphors in terms of their source domains are as follows:orientational metaphors are mainly UP-DOWN conceptual metaphors;ontological metaphors are HUMAN metaphors,MACHINE metaphors,PLANTS&ANIMALS metaphors,and CONTAINER metaphors;major structural metaphors are JOURNEY metaphors and WAR metaphors.Those conceptual metaphors have both literal metaphorical expressions and non-literal metaphorical expressions.The non-literal metaphors,including the extension of the used parts and the unused parts of a domain,together with novel metaphors are the imaginative metaphors.In these textbooks,there are 111 imaginative metaphorical expressions,96 of which are closely correlated with afore-mentioned conceptual metaphors,and 79 of which are involved the unused part of metaphors.While the number of novel metaphors that have little correlation with conventional conceptual metaphors is only 15.The imaginative metaphors in terms of the source domain are mainly in the domain of HUMAN,PLANTS,CONTAINER,JOURNEY and WAR.The imaginative metaphors involving HUMAN metaphors are the extension of unused part of human identity,human relation,human evolution and human personalities;the imaginative metaphors of PLANTS metaphors focus on the unused part of fruit,budding,fading,fiber,and harvest;the imaginative metaphors of CONTAINER metaphors are the extension of unused part like dimensions,tightness,closeness/openness of a container;those of the JOURNEY metaphors involving both the extension of used part of the path,like the twist,turns,and crossroads,and the extension of the unused part such as the dirt,the steps,and the feeling of the traveler;those of the war metaphor mainly focus on the unused part of the reason of the war,the strategies,the temperature change of the people in war.