A Cognitive Linguistic Study Of Core Images In Li Qingzhao's Poems

Images are central elements of poems since they embody the aesthetic preferences,life experiences and spiritual world of an individual poet.As most Chinese scholars contend,images connect language and meaning in the sense that language cannot fully express the meaning while images can invite,activate and deepen the meaning.But traditional studies on poetic images seldom explore the way that images cognitively interact with language and meaning.The rapid development of cognitive linguistic theories provide us with tools to examine the cognitive 'mechanisms behind images.The thesis selects 47 poems written by Li Qingzhao as the research data,and adopts the qualitative method to analyze the core images,with Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Image Schema Theory as the theoretical frameworks.The thesis firstly collects the core images in all of Li's poems by manual work,counts the frequency of each core image,divides them into groups and explores their features and connotations.Secondly,the thesis identifies the systematic metaphorical mappings between the images and abstract conceptual domains according to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and attempts to explain the experiential grounding of the metaphors.Thirdly,the thesis identifies some image schemata that prevail in the image system and manifests how they structure bodily experiences and motivate the metaphorical extensions from the physical world to abstract concepts and emotions.Based on our investigation,firstly,it is found that there are two major categories of core images in Li's poems,namely,the natural images and humanistic images,with flowers and wine the most prominent in each category.Secondly,as for natural images,flower images encode the bidirectional nature of metaphor,which is demonstrated by two reversible conceptual metaphors:(1)PLAN'TS ARE PEOPLE,which is instantiated by the poetess into three new metaphors,including FLOWERS ARE FEMALES,FLOWERS ARE INTIMATE FRIENDS,and FLOWERS ARE RUTHLESS PEOPLE;(2)PEOPLE ARE PLANTS.In terms of humanistic images,there are two conceptual metaphors,including HAPPY IS UP and SAD IS DOWN,and TIME IS A RESOURCE,which are respectively extended into HAPPINESS IS THE ROLLING OF CURTAIN and SADNESS IS THE DROOPING OF THE CURTAIN,and THE PASSING OF TIME IS THE BURNING OF INCENSE.Thirdly,there are three major image schemata in function,including the CONTAINER schema,SCALE schema and CYCLE schema.Besides,there are some other less-prominent schemata,consisting of PATH schema,NEAR-FAR schema and LINK schema.In general,there exist systematic conceptual metaphors and image schemata behind the core images,which represent a unique cognitive system about time,space and life in the world that the poems have built.Therefore,in this sense,images are the entry to study the distinctive cognitive world of an individual poet.