A Corpus-based Study Of Metaphors In Great Expectations

The traditional study of metaphor considers metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon and studies its composition and rhetorical function.More and more studies have attempted to explain metaphor from a cognitive perspective with the rise of cognitive linguistics and the introduction of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the 1980 s.What is more,the application of the corpus approach improves the objectivity of conceptual metaphor research.However,previous studies on conceptual metaphor mainly focus on the daily language,news,political speech,and other genres,and relatively few on the literary works of writers.With regard to the study of metaphor in literature,David Lodge(2004,p.340)believes that all literary works are metaphorical in nature.This thesis takes Great Expectations,a novel by Charles Dickens,as the research object and builds a corpus(Great Expectations Corpus)of 188,842 words.This thesis adopts the metaphor identification method of Pragglejaz Group(2010),and the corpus tool Ant Conc 3.5.8 and Sketch Engine,as well as the statistical analysis software SPSS,to search and identify the metaphors in the novel.It classifies the metaphors according to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory.The thesis aims to explore the following three questions:(1)What are the features of the distribution of conceptual metaphors in Great Expectations?(2)What are the mapping processes of conceptual metaphors in Great Expectations?(3)What is the relationship between Dickens' s cognitive context,social background and conceptual metaphors in Great Expectations?Based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,this thesis uses Charteris-Black's(2004)method of critical metaphor analysis to analyze the metaphors in Great Expectations.It draws the following results:(1)The STTR of GEC is 39.7%,and there are two kinds of conceptual metaphors in Great Expectations: structural metaphors and ontological metaphors.According to the development of the story,Dickens divides the novel into three stages.The metaphors in it are mainly distributed in the second stage,accounting for 39.13% of the total;while,the proportion of metaphors in the first stage is the lowest,which is 28.74%.The structural metaphors are mainly distributed in the second stage,while ontological metaphors are mainly distributed in the third stage,accounting for 71.01% and 28.99% of the total,respectively.(2)The source domains of these two types of metaphors involve disease,religion,war,death,and other aspects,among which the three categories of animal,human and nature are the ones with high frequency,and they are mapped onto the target domains such as the features of character and the relationship between characters.(3)Dickens' s own experience,as well as the judicial system,educational system,and culture of Victorian England,are closely related to the metaphors in the novel,reflecting his criticism of them and his sympathy for the underclass,especially the poor children.This thesis is expected to bring some revelation to English literature teaching and stimulate more research on literary works based on the corpus method.It is also hoped to enhance readers' awareness of the linguistic features in Dickens' s works.