A Study Of Metaphors In The Mottos Of Chinese Prestigious Universities

It is apparent that Chinese university motto represents not only a special linguistic but cultural phenomenon.Although it is brief in form,school motto is rich in meaning.Besides,its syntactic structure is composed of two-word phrases,four-word phrases or eight-word phrases in general.Moreover,most of words and phrases originate from ancient Chinese books.Under the influence of Chinese traditional culture,school motto is equipped with multiple,intricate and profound meanings.The meanings of certain words and phrases are gradually altered in contrast to modern ones.Though issues mentioned above appear,the way people wield metaphor to distinguish and comprehend objects has existed since ancient times.Consequently,it is still available to analyze metaphors of school mottos from cognitive perspective.Meanwhile,linguistic features of metaphorical expressions in school mottos and implicit connotation will be discovered.Furthermore,academic research on school mottos is primarily conducted from the perspective of education,culture and translation,while less from cognitive perspective.School motto demonstrates the name card of the university,which reflects cultural characteristics as well as academic concepts of a university.In terms of a university,school motto indicates its educational philosophies,concepts,and relates its culture and value pursuit for teachers,students and the public.Above all,a pertinent school motto is conducive to molding a proper image of a university and brings about certain social influence.On the basis of mentioned above,this thesis cognitively pays more attention to metaphors of Chinese universities' mottos,and discusses the educational philosophies and cognitive functions as reflected.In the light of the ranking list of Chinese universities published by Xiaoyouhui,a Chinese evaluation institution,291 of top 10% universities are selected from 2914 universities precisely.Metaphorical expressions of these universities' mottos are identified by metaphor identification procedures(MIP for short).Afterwards,the educational philosophies of Chinese universities and cognitive functions of metaphors in universities' mottos are revealed and analyzed respectively.Three research questions are addressed:(1)What types of metaphors are mainly utilized in the mottos of Chinese prestigious universities?(2)What are the educational philosophies manifested in the metaphors of school mottos of Chinese prestigious universities?(3)What are the cognitive functions of the metaphors in the school mottos of Chinese prestigious universities?It is in position to be concluded that there are five major types of conceptual metaphors in the school mottos of Chinese prestigious universities as follows: Journey Metaphor,Water Metaphor,Plant Metaphor,Qi Metaphor,and Instrument Metaphor.Moreover,these metaphors indicate the educational philosophies of Chinese prestigious universities.In the first place,Chinese universities carry out culture and cultivate qualified talents with learning ability,innovative ability along with noble morality.In the second place,Chinese universities serve the society and guide the future of our country.Metaphors in universities' mottos embody two major cognitive functions as below: interpretative function as well as educational function.Interpretative function is preferably conducive to grasping cultural connotation and educational philosophies of universities.Equally,it enables universities to disseminate their value properly.Educational function is basically in view of encouraging students and teachers to work together aiming at identical purpose.In addition,two implications are involved.First of all,owing to the fact that school motto is a special language form,its metaphorical representation distinguishes from conventional metaphor.One is unique language forms of school mottos;the other is diverse metaphorical representations of metaphors in school mottos.What mentioned above raises the degree of difficulties of metaphor identification and interpretation.Therefore,encyclopedic knowledge of readers is required so as to speculate and taps their cognitive resources for understanding.Secondly,the school motto,as a kind of culture,plays a cohesive,encouraging and guiding role for teachers and students in colleges and universities.In our society,it is equipped with a positive influence on people's thinking mode,values and behavior norms.Meanwhile,the school motto constructs a suitable ecological development environment for colleges and universities.Therefore,this thesis enriches research on school mottos to a certain extent and provides some references for metaphor research of school motto in the future.