A Comparative Study On The Metaphors Of Characters' Names In Pilgrimage To The West Of Chinese And English Version From The Pespective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Metaphor has been treated as a sort of rhetoric means for a long time.However,the significance of metaphor and the important role it plays in literary works in our daily life have been noticed and dug into full depth as time pass by.Lakoff's conceptual metaphor came into the sight of scholars and became one of the most influential theories,during this period which called Metaphormania after 1970 s.During this period,scholars first combined conceptual metaphor theory with people's thinking mode.However,this interesting academic thought has some shortcomings in the domestic academic circle.The large-scale rise of metaphor research began in 2003,China.The domestic scholars use the cognitive linguistics to discuss the concept metaphor theory in literary works,which is also the new trend of conceptual metaphor research in China.As one of the most famous Chinese classic novels,the Pilgrimage to the West is the crystallization of Chinese traditional cultures as well the reflection of the old society.The research on metaphor in the classic work the Pilgrimage to the West has been on the rise in recent years.In the novel,the author Wu Chengen created more than a thousand characters,among which many characters had their own names.Naming in this novel was one of the writing devices that aimed to describe characters and present theme.While the name study based on the theory of conceptual metaphor is not so common.As a hot spot novel which has been researched for a long time,a study on the names of Tang Seng,Sun Wukong,Zhu Wuneng,Sha Wujing and the other important characters is so lack,although there are a few about these names,it is still a lack of systematic and overall research on naming metaphor.In view of this,the author intends to combine the names of characters in the novel with conceptual metaphor to write this thesis.This paper is divided into six parts.The first chapter,the author introduces the research background and topic basis.The second chapter gives a literature review on metaphor and the Pilgrimage to the West.Chapter Three expounds the theoretical premise of this paper,as well as the definition,characteristics,classification and mapping mechanism of metaphor systematically.Chapter Four explores the names and metaphorical meanings of four masters and disciples,immortal and Buddha characters,demons and ghosts in the Pilgrimage to the West.And in the fifth chapter,the similarities and differences between Chinese and English versions of the Pilgrimage to the West are discussed and distinguished firstly,and then analyzes the motivations for the construction of characters' names.The last chapter proposes corresponding strategies for the problems in the translation of Chinese and western classics,and summarizes the full text.The innovations of this study are as follows: first,the author analyzes the phenomenon of personal metaphor in the English and Chinese texts of PTW within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics.Secondly,it constructs the metaphorical cognitive mechanism of Chinese and English names in the novel of PTW.Thirdly,it compares the similarities and differences of the metaphorical cognitive mechanism of names in PTW.Fourth,it explores the reasons for the differences in conceptual metaphor mechanisms.Fifth,the study explores a feasible path for the cultural output of ancient Chinese classics translation.