Sexism In Linguistic Metaphors

Over the past few decades,sexism has been a heated topic in the field of linguistics which has aroused a large number of debates and researches at home and abroad.Numerous outstanding linguists have explored sexism from the perspectives of cognitive linguistics,sociolinguistics,semantics,pragmatics,psycholinguistics,etc.and their studies have enlightened us about many kinds of phenomena in language.Although previous studies have made a lot of glorious achievements,but previous scholars seldom studies this issue from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics,which serves as an interdisciplinary link between the sociolinguists and the practitioners of cognitive linguistics.This thesis explores sexism in linguistic metaphors from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics,it aims to find out an internal operating mechanism which can account for the formation of sexism in linguistic metaphors.In order to achieve the aim of this thesis,the author will try to answer the following three research questions.First of all,what types of sexism are expressed in linguistic metaphors? Second of all,what kind of cognitive mechanism generates sexism in linguistic metaphors? And finally,what social and cultural factors may lead to sexism in linguistic metaphors?In this thesis,the author conducts a descriptive as well as an explanatory analysis of sexism in linguistic metaphors.In the descriptive analysis,the author respectively explains the classification and the characteristics of the metaphorical sexism.Based on this,in the explanatory analysis,the author firstly deals with the role of cognitive reference point in understanding metaphor.And then,the author further explores what social and cultural factors may influence people’s selection of cognitive reference point.Ultimately,the author comes to the conclusion that certain social and cultural factors such as the physiological and psychological factors,the social division of labor,the traditional culture and religiousculture as well as the social customs and family education,etc.may influence people’s selection of cognitive reference point when they are understanding metaphors,and then the different choices of cognitive reference point ultimately lead to the formation of sexism in linguistic metaphor.In other words,the formation of sexism in linguistic metaphor is the result of the combined effects from cognitive factors as well as the social and cultural factors.In addition,in the last chapter,the author also encourages people to make further exploration into sexism in linguistic metaphors as well as cognitive sociolinguistics.