（英语语言文学专业论文）隐喻：从已知通达未知的推理桥梁——隐喻的认知研究.pdf

iii 中文摘要 在传统隐喻理论中, 隐喻被看作一种语言现象1980 年美国语言学家莱考夫和 约翰逊以他们的创新之作我们赖以生存的隐喻一书开拓了当代隐喻研究的新领 域隐喻被定义为概念系统中的跨域映射 从认知的角度莱考夫和约翰逊区分了概念隐喻与语言隐喻概念隐喻是人类概 念系统中的核心概念据统计我们日常语言中大约 70的表达形式源于概念隐喻 根据莱考夫和约翰逊的认知经验观概念结构有意义是因为它是有形体的即它是源 于并依赖于概念之先的身体经历我们不断反复的身体经历引起称为意象图式的经验 格式塔的发展意象图式是隐喻的认知基础在从源域到目标域的隐喻映射中起着至 关重要的作用作为基本的认知机制除了构建概念系统组织人类经验外隐喻为 认识事物提供了新的视角而且还能创造新的意义表达出新的思想 本文从认知研究的角度回顾评述了主要的传统隐喻理论和当代隐喻理论分析 讨论了概念隐喻及其类型并对隐喻的认知基础与认知功能作了较为深入的探讨在 结语中作者指出隐喻不仅仅是语言现象而且也是认知现象隐喻能使我们通 过另一类事物来理解和经历某一类事物是从已知通达未知的推理桥梁 关键词认知隐喻概念隐喻意象图式映射 ii abstract in classical theories, metaphor is viewed as a linguistic phenomenon. in 1980, american linguists lakoff and johnson opened up a whole new area for the contemporary study of metaphor with the publication of their pioneering book metaphors we live by. the term metaphor has come to mean “a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system”. from the perspective of cognition, lakoff and johnson have drawn an important distinction between conceptual metaphors or metaphorical concepts and linguistic metaphors or metaphorical expressions. the conceptual metaphors or metaphorical concepts are core concepts of human conceptual system. it is estimated that 70 percent of expressions in our everyday language arise from metaphorical concepts. according to the experiential view of cognition developed by lakoff and johnson, “conceptual structure is meaningful because it is embodied, that is, it arises from, and is tied to our preconceptual bodily experiences.” our recurring bodily experiences give rise to the development of an experiential gestalt, called image schema. the image schema is the cognitive basis of metaphor. it plays a crucial role in metaphorical mappings from any source domain to a target domain. as a basic cognitive mechanism, the primary function of metaphor is to provide a partial understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another kind of experience. besides structuring conceptual system and conceptualizing human experience, metaphor can give a new understanding of our experience and create new meaning. in this thesis, from the perspective of cognitive study, the author presents a review of theories of metaphor, both classical and contemporary, focuses on a discussion of the conceptual metaphor, and makes an exploration into metaphor in its cognitive basis and cognitive function. in the conclusion, the author claims that metaphor is not just a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon; enabling us “to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another”, metaphor is a rational bridge from the known to the unknown. key words: cognition, metaphor, conceptual metaphor, image schema, mapping 1 1 introduction metaphor is a universal phenomenon. people use metaphor all the time. metaphor is ubiquitous in everyday language and thought. in the book the philosophy of rhetoric, english rhetorician i. a. richards once said, “we cannot get through three sentences of ordinary fluid discourse without it.” (from hu shuzhong, 1999: 216; shu dingfang, 2000: 1; li guonan, 1999: 231) so the importance of metaphor to human language and cognition cannot be over emphasized. this importance is well summarized by malotki when he writes: man, in confronting reality, faces a kaleidoscope of phenomena ranging from the natural to the man-made, to the imaginary, to the totally abstract. comprehension of such a broad inventory of reality and non-reality requires language, the tool that permits man to take verbal stock of objective and subjective experiences alike. in mans ongoing endeavor to conceptualize and verbalize a world that can never be fully known, language is the vital intermediary. language provides a repertoire of coping mechanisms, of which metaphor is one of the most powerful and useful. (from ning yu, 1998: 1) etymologically metaphor derives from the greek meta (trans) + pherein (to carry), i.e., literally “carry across” or transfer. in the narrowest sense, metaphor refers to a specific way of using the words and phrases of a language, and in a broad sense, it is applied to the process of conceptualization itself, leading to the aphorism “all thought is metaphorical” (indurkhya, 1992: 13). for more than 2000 years, metaphor has attracted the attention of scholars interested in language, especially rhetoricians and literary critics. according to shu dingfang (2000: 2), from aristotle to richards (about 300 b.c. to the 1930s), it was the period of rhetorical study of metaphor; from the 1930s to the 2 early 1970s, it was the period of semantic study of metaphor in which scholars examined the semantic meaning of metaphor from the perspectives of logic, philosophy and linguistics; from the 1970s to the present, it is the period of multidisciplinary study of metaphor and scholars have made a study of metaphor in a broad range of disciplines: cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, pragmatics, semiotics, education, science, as well as literary criticism and rhetoric. in such a short period of a few decades, thousands of books and research papers on metaphor have been published and there seems to have been a “metaphorical revolution” on a global scale. johnson called this phenomenon “metaphormania”. he observed: “we are in the midst of a metaphormania. only three decades ago the situation was just the opposite: poets created metaphors, everybody used them, and philosophers (linguists, psychologists, etc.) ignored them. today we seem possessed by metaphor.” (from ning yu, 1998: 2). traditionally, metaphor is viewed as a matter of language, or a figure of speech and this can be traced back to as early as aristotle, who defines metaphor as “consisting in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else (poetics 1457b)” (from ricoeur, 1978: 13). this definition exerts an important influence on the developments regarding rhetoric and metaphor. for him metaphor is something that happens to the noun. in connecting metaphor to noun or word and not to discourse, aristotle establishes the orientation of the study of metaphor with regard to poetics and rhetoric for centuries. metaphor is confined among word-focused figures of speech and this makes it impossible to recognize the discourse features of metaphor, which operates not only at the level of a segment of discourse, the name or noun, but also at all the strategic levels of language words, sentences, discourse, etc. so for most people metaphor is a rhetorical device, primarily decorative and ornamental; it is just nice. people employ metaphor for strictly communicative purposes (e.g., compactness, vividness). any distinctive achievements of metaphor are limited to its stylistic or didactic advantages (e.g., metaphors are more striking, forceful, or pleasing) (johnson, 1980). and as a figure of speech, its study is confined mostly to literature and rhetoric. thus in 1980, lakoff and johnson could write: 3 metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish-a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. for this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. (lakoff it is the mark of genius - for to make good metaphors implies an eye for 7 resemblances (poetics 22: 1458b; butcher p. 31). (from mahon, 1999) in the poetics, aristotle gives a well-known definition of metaphor. he defines metaphor as “the application of an alien name by transference either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion (21:1457b; butcher p.28)”. (from mahon, 1999) here is another version of aristotles definition of metaphor: metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy (poetics 1457b 6-9). (from ricoeur, 1978: 13) aristotle explains the genus-species relation like this: since “lying at anchor” is a species of the genus “lying”, one can say there lies my ship (genus-to-species metaphor); since “ten thousand” is a species of a “large number”, one can say verily ten thousand noble deeds hath odysseus wrought (species-to-genus metaphor); since “to draw away” and “to cleave” are each a species of the genus “taking away”, one can say with blade of bronze drew away the life (species-to-species metaphor); and since old age is to life as evening is to day, one can say that old age is the evening of life (analogy metaphor) (poetics 1457b; butcher p.28). (from mahon,1999). all these metaphors, aristotle believes, fall into at least one of these four categories, although analogy metaphors are the most pleasing. this account of metaphor is known as the comparison theory of metaphor. some contemporary scholars still accept this account. in my view, the comparison view treats entire sentences as aberrant, rather than focusing on component words in a sentence. on the surface, the sentences falsely assert or presuppose some relation of identity or class membership; at a hidden level, they state a well-formed comparison. specifically, the underlying form asserts that two domains of knowledge, the topic and vehicle domains, are similar in some respects, in spite of their manifest differences. obviously, two views have something different as well as in common. 8 2.3 interaction view in a metaphor of the “a is b” form, a and b belong to two different systems respectively. the interaction of these two systems results in metaphorical meaning. this view (or theory) was first proposed by richards (1936) in his work the philosophy of rhetoric (shu dingfang, 2000: 3). he calls a the “topic” or “tenor”; b the “vehicle” or “ground”. but the first detailed account of the interaction theory was presented by black in his classical paper metaphor (black, 1962). on the basis of richardss view, black developed and improved this theory. he argues for this theory and seeks to make its tenets more explicit. he calls a the “principal subject” or “frame”; b the “subsidiary subject” or “focus”. he argues that the topic and vehicle have systems of “associated implications,” including commonplace cultural beliefs and personal attitudes, and unusual connotations established by prior discourse. in a metaphor, some of the implications associated with the vehicle are applied to the topic, altering the topics system of implications. in the process, “the metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses, organizes features of the principal subject by implying features about it that normally apply to the subsidiary subject” (black, 1962). he characterizes the process as a filtering” of the topic by the vehicle. the process is interactive, because the filter alters the properties of the topic, and the topic, in turn, influences the nature of the filter. johnson (1980: 52) explains the interaction view as follows: in the metaphor “a is b” (e.g., man is a wolf), the “system of associated commonplaces” attaching to a interacts with that which attaches to b to produce emergent or novel metaphorical meaning. the “associated commonplaces” or “related implications” are just those things generally held to be true about the object, person, or event with which they are associated. for example, in the man-wolf metaphor, the associated commonplaces corresponding to wolf, which might include beliefs like wolves are ferocious, territorial, and possessive, organize our view of man. the interaction of these two systems of implications results in the selection of appropriate commonplaces of one subject that are then applied, in the same or modified sense, to the other subject-thing. so in this process, 9 certain human characteristics, such as walking on two legs, are pushed in the background, while other characteristics, such as ferociousness, are rendered prominent. the “interaction” involved here is not merely the intersection of two sets to form some new intersect set; rather, it involves a mutual influence of one system of commonplaces upon another. to sum up the discussion, i think that the interaction view has such main viewpoints: 1. a metaphor contains two subjects, principal subject and subsidiary subject. 2. the two subjects are to be regarded as “systems” rather than isolated words. 3. the two subjects have systems of “associated implications (or commonplaces),” including commonplace cultural beliefs and personal attitudes, and unusual connotations established by prior discourse. 4. metaphorical meaning is a result of an interaction between a metaphorical expression and the context in which it is used. 5. the interaction is a process of a mutual influence of one system of commonplaces upon another. 2.4 cognition view the discussion on metaphor from a perspective of human cognition can be traced back to english romantic poet p. b. shelly. according to yan shiqing (1995), metaphor, in shellys eyes, is not an ornament independent of language, but a way of thought and life, in which people observe and learn from the world; it is where the crux of human language lies. in the early 19th century, shelly points out, “language is vitally metaphorical (richards, 1967: 90)” (from li guonan, 1999: 235). in my study, i have found that for about three hundred years now, various mostly european philosophers and linguists had been anticipating the central tenets and findings of the cognitive theory of metaphor. 10 german scholar hartung (1831) anticipates - at least programmatically - crucial elements of the cognitive theory of metaphor, as the following passage shows: our perception proceeds in part by way of the senses, in part by means of the mind. sensual perception is always first: therefore language serves sensual perception before it serves mental apperception. by means of the analogy of the mental and the sensual, words are later transferred to mental apperception. like the poets, ordinary people refine language by means of metaphors. just as there is no sensual expression which could not be transferred to mental apperception, we claim that there are no terms for mental issues which are not taken from sensual things. thus wherever we have both sensual and metaphorical applications, we should without doubt regard the former as basic. (from jakel, 1997) the neo-kantian ernst cassier (1923) makes an analysis of metaphor like this: it is our distinctive knowledge of the limbs of our body which serves as the starting point of all further orientation in space. the distinctive image of our own body, seen as a complete and structured organism, serves as a sort model for our construal of the world as a whole. here we have our primary level of coordination, to which we can later turn back and relate, and from which we take the vocabulary to refer linguistically to this progress. (from jakel, 1997) in the 1930s, i. r. richards says in his book the philosophy of rhetoric, “thought is metaphorical.” in 1939 the american benjamin lee whorf, one of the initiators of comparative linguistics, makes the following general claim (whorf 1939: 146 and 155): we can hardly refer to the simplest nonspatial situation without constant resort to physical metaphors. our metaphorical system, by naming nonspatial experiences after spatial ones, imputes to sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, and 11 thoughts qualities like the colors, luminosities, shapes, angles, textures, and motions of spatial experience. (from jakel, 1997) the german linguist harald weinrich (1958) unfolds his theory of metaphor in his essay: is every metaphor rooted in an image field? that would be too much to claim. in fact, every word can take on metaphorical meaning, every matter can be addressed metaphorically, and imagination knows no bounds. arbitrary, isolated metaphors are always possible. but they are rarer than some may think, and what is more important, usually they are not successful in the linguistic community. the linguistic community favors integrated metaphors, in particular (though not exclusively) for the domain of mental experience. the metaphor that is integrated within an image field has the best chance of being accepted by the linguistic community, and the masters of language know this. (from jakel, 1997) american scholar michael reddy (1979) proposes “the conduit metaphor”. he states that the speaker puts “ideas (objects)” into words (containers) and send them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the “idea/objects” out of the “word/containers”. many english expressions illustrate this metaphorical phenomenon. so he observes that our language about language is structured roughly by the following complex metaphor (lakoff whats more important is that it is a way of thinking and a means of cognition for mankind. compared with the classical views of metaphor, the cognition view has the following main features: 1. its research scope has been expanded from the narrow to the wide. metaphor is no longer confined to the term used in traditional rhetoric. it has become a focus of multidisciplinary study in linguistics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc. 2. it holds that metaphor is a process of thought and the basis of metaphor is a mapping process in nature. metaphor is viewed as a way of thinking and an approach to cognize the world as well as as a linguistic, rhetorical device. 3. it claims that the primary function of metaphor is to provide a partial understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another kind of experience. this may involve preexisting isolated similarities, the creation of new similarities, and more. 4