（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）生肖文化与隐喻变体—属喻.pdf

iv 生肖文化与隐喻变体属喻 生肖文化与隐喻变体属喻 研 究 生：高金林 年级：2005 级 研究方向：认知语言学 指导老师：覃修桂 教授 学科专业：外国语言学及应用语言学 中 文 摘 要 中 文 摘 要 生肖文化是一种历史悠久、影响广大、生命力强的民俗传统文化，它深入到中华民族的每 一个家庭、每个人的生活中，其影响涉及到天文、地理、宗教和文化艺术等诸多领域，蔚为壮 观。目前，许多学者对生肖文化的起源、发展、流变及哲学依据等方面进行了深入的研究，但 是对于“属喻”这种由生肖文化衍生出的特殊语言现象的研究则相对较少。 属喻是一种特殊的隐喻变体，它具有鲜明的汉民族特色。在属喻表达中，传统生肖被赋予 新的内涵，而大量涌现出的不属于传统生肖范围的新“属相”则创造出了更多的新意。这些传 统的和新生的属相被用来形象地比喻人或事物的性格或特点， 而不是传统地用来记录人的出生 年份，它们可以创造出幽默、委婉和激发想象的表达效果。 本文以属喻表达为研究对象， 从认知语言学的视角出发， 运用丰富的语料， 从属喻的结构、 分类、成因、认知心理机制以及功能等几方面对这一特殊隐喻模式进行系统研究，最后发现, 属喻本质上是一种富含汉民族特色的隐喻变体， 其运作过程主要包含了一对特殊的隐喻映射过 程和远程比喻，而这些又最终决定了属喻的特殊认知功能和效果。 本文经过对属喻的多角度系统深入分析最终得出如下结论： 1.生肖文化本质上是一种动物崇拜,一种动物隐喻，在其背后起作用的概念隐喻是“人类 是动物” 。 2.属喻是对生肖文化的活用和扩展，在本质上又是一种富含汉民族特色的隐喻变体，其 背后暗含了汉民族朴素的隐喻思维， 它通过拟人和拟物等隐喻形式把人以及周围世界的各种事 物联系了起来，其运作过程包含了一对特殊的隐喻映射：当人作本体时，属喻是一个直接的拟 物（动物化，植物化等）过程；当除人之外的事物作本体时，属喻则是一种由拟人和拟物（动 物化，植物化等）构成的间接映射过程。 3.属喻也是一种特殊的认知模式， 通过这种特殊的隐喻表达模式， 我们可以通过一种事物 来理解另外一种事物，实现人与物之间以及物与物之间的互相映射和理解，从而实现属喻的认 知功能。 .属喻也是一种有效的交际和娱乐手段，在日常交际中可以起到加强交际双方的亲密程 度及委婉礼貌等交际功能和娱乐功能。 关键词：关键词：生肖文化；隐喻变体；属喻；认知机制；功能 v the culture of chinese zodiacs and metaphor variation: shu yu postgraduate: gao jinlin grade: 2005 orientation: cognitive linguistics supervisor: professor qin xiugui major field of study: foreign linguistics metaphor variation; c-z based metaphors; cognitive mechanism; function vii abbreviations ap an c-z efs hb hf mt mf np pp s t t s animals and the body parts abstract notions chinese zodiacs enigmatic folk simile human beings historical figures machines and tools mythical figures natural phenomena plants and the body parts source domain target domain target and source viii list of tables and figures table 1.1 chinese zodiac animal signs and human characteristics. 2 table 3.4.1 types of targets . 19 table 3.4.2 types of sources. 21 figure 1 direct mapping. 31 figure 2 indirect mapping. 35 论文独创性声明论文独创性声明 本人郑重声明：所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工 作及取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含其他个人或其 他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究作出重要贡献的个人和 集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人承担本声明的法律责任。 研究生签名： 日期： 论文使用授权声明论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留、使用学位论文的规定。广西师范 大学、中国科学技术信息研究所、清华大学论文合作部，有权保留本人所送 交学位论文的复印件和电子文档，可以采用影印、缩印或其他复制手段保存 论文。本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的内容相一致。除在保密期内的保密 论文外，允许论文被查阅和借阅，可以公布（包括刊登）论文的全部或部分 内容。论文的公布（包括刊登）授权广西师范大学学位办办理。 研究生签名： 日期： 导 师签名： 日期： iii acknowledgements i would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to many people for their kind help in my academic pursuit over the past few years. first and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, professor qin xiugui, for his kindness, patience, encouragement and excellent guidance during my m.a. program at guangxi normal university. he is the constant source of academic guidance and moral support for me. without his inspiration, sharp comments, criticisms and great help in various ways, i could never have completed this thesis. i am very grateful to professor li guonan from national huaqiao university. during the first phrase of this research, he offered many valuable suggestions and stimulated my thinking to a number of relative issues through e-mail communication. his wisdom, profundity and kindness impressed me deeply. and i am also grateful to professor li wenzhong from henan normal university, who read through my thesis design and gave me a lot of valuable suggestions on corpus collecting and thesis writing. my heart-felt thanks also go to all the teachers from guangxi normal university, who developed my extensive interest in various fields of linguistics, such as cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics and semantics and so on. i am also influenced deeply by their personal character, especially their kindness, consideration and great sense of responsibility. many friends and classmates have shared their ideas with me and have provided help of numerous kinds. i wish to thank zhang youwei for being very generous with his time in sharing his inspiring ideas about my topic. i also wish to thank huang xingyun, lu qiaohua, zhao dongqin and su huihui for their great help and brotherly support. finally i acknowledge my debt to my family for their kind help and consideration, particularly in times of need and difficulty. their love has accompanied me during my entire journey of academic pursuit. - 1 - chapter 1 1 introduction sheng xiao (also called shu xiang, the animal signs in chinese zodiac system) has exerted a significant influence on the lives and fantasies of chinese people for thousands of years and it has, in fact, become an integral part of the traditional chinese culture. in addition to its great impact on the traditional chinese customs, the culture of chinese zodiacs has also influenced the chinese language and tropes, for example, there is a special kind of trope or metaphor variation mentioned in the dictionary of chinese tropes (汉语修辞格大 辞典): in chinese, there is a special kind of trope, which uses shu xiang ( also called sheng xiao) or borrows shu xiang as the vehicle and the trope connective is “shu” (belongs to), so we call it “shu yu”（the chinese-zodiac based metaphor, abbreviated as the c-z based metaphor）(tang songbo on the other hand, some new chinese zodiac signs that do not belong to the traditional domain of chinese zodiac signs, are created or coined. as a result, everything can be viewed as a chinese zodiac sign. thus, traditional or untraditional chinese zodiac signs are used untraditionally to understand or describe one thing in term of another in a humorous way. in addition, in this kind of expressions, chinese zodiac signs are no longer human-exclusive, and all kinds of things including animals, plants, man-made objects, natural phenomena, and abstract notions can have chinese zodiac signs. these expressions can be termed as chinese zodiac based metaphors. in this thesis they are regarded as a special metaphor variation derived from the traditional culture of chinese zodiacs. 1.3 motives and objectives of the study the reason why this thesis takes the chinese zodiac expressions as the object of study is that the culture of chinese zodiacs is believed universally to be one of the most profound and influential elements of the traditional chinese culture. it has survived thousands of years of changes and is still blooming in modern times. whats more, with the growing influence of the chinese culture, the culture of chinese zodiacs is becoming internationalized. more and more foreign countries begin to pay attention to this special kind of cultural phenomena, and publish chinese zodiac animal stamps. in addition, scholars begin to study the various aspects of this old but energetic cultural phenomenon, for example, the origin, development, philosophical basis, - 4 - cross-cultural comparison and so on. however, little research has been conducted on the cognitive and psychological basis of this phenomenon. as a kind of cognitive and psychological activity, the chinese zodiac expressions and the derivational expressions must have some cognitive and psychological basis. therefore, we attempt to conduct a systematic research on the chinese zodiac expressions, especially the untraditionally derivational ones from the cognitive perspective, which can help us get rid of the superstitious cover and have a better understanding of this influential culture. more specifically, this study attempts to answer the following questions: 1) what are the characteristics of c-z based metaphors? 2) what are the socio-cultural and cognitive bases of this kind of culture-loaded expressions? 3) what are the functions of this kind of expressions? 1.4 the outline of the study the thesis consists of five chapters: chapter 1 is an introduction to the culture of chinese zodiacs, the relationships between chinese zodiac expressions, metaphor, motivations, objectives and the outline of this thesis. chapter 2 is the literature review of the study of the culture of chinese zodiacs, metaphor and c-z based metaphors, which will cover all the theories and the present research related to the study of this thesis. chapter 3 is the multi-perspective study of c-z based metaphors and it mainly focus on the structure, classification, socio-cultural bases and the deep cognitive and psychological mechanism of the c-z based metaphor. chapter 4 mainly analyzes the functions of c-z based metaphors in our daily life, such as the cognitive, communicative and recreational functions. chapter 5 sums up the findings, points out the limitations of the study and puts forward some suggestions for further studies. - 5 - chapter 2 2 literature review as mentioned in chapter 1, the c-z based metaphor is a special metaphor variation, so the literature review in this chapter will focus on the culture of chinese zodiacs, metaphor, and the c-z based metaphor, including studies and theories related to metaphor and the c-z based metaphor. 2.1 the study of the culture of chinese zodiacs the culture of chinese zodiacs has been longstanding within the chinese culture, and each chinese has his own chinese zodiac animal sign that will accompany and influence him all the time. chinese zodiac animal signs are composed of twelve animals (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig), which develop from the special way of noting yearsearthly branches. for the convenience of memorizing, the twelve ordinary animals that influenced peoples lives were chosen to symbolize the terrestrial branches by ancient chinese, which made a cycle for twelve years. the animal signs combined with the cultural connotations and customs make the culture of chinese zodiacs one of the most influential and energetic elements of the traditional chinese culture. as a typical national culture and wealthy national property, the culture of chinese zodiacs has spread for more than two thousand years and it has become a popular image that implies good luck and nice bless. right now, it has been used in many fields, including painting, sculpture, architecture, workmanship, china and so on. in the academic world, a lot of researches have been conducted on the culture of chinese zodiacs in terms of its origin, development, philosophical basis, archeology, folklore, cultural connotations, cross-cultural comparison, and translation and so on. however, the object of this study is the c-z based metaphor, and we will analyze this special culture-loaded linguistic phenomenon from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. therefore, studies of the culture of chinese zodiacs from other perspectives will be regarded as background information. here, we will just review some important works related to our study. firstly, the culture of chinese zodiacs has long been believed to be one of the most influential elements of the traditional chinese culture, so it inevitably becomes the study focus of folklorists, historians and archeologists, who have studied the origin, development, archeology and folklores of chinese zodiacs. by now, many books and articles have been published, for example, the overview of the twelve chinese zodiac animals (十二生肖大观) (1989) edited by ma hanyan and xu qiaoying; aspects of the twelve chinese zodiac animals (十二生肖面 面观) (zhao botao, 2000) and talks on the twelve chinese zodiac animals (大话十二生肖) - 6 - (zhao botao, 2004) edited by zhao botao (赵伯陶); the twelve chinese zodiac animals and chinese culture (生肖与中国文化)（wu yucheng, 2003）and the twelve chinese zodiac animals (十二生肖) (wu yucheng,2006) edited by wu yucheng (吴裕成). among these books, the twelve chinese zodiac animals and chinese culture (生肖与中国文化) is the most successful of all. in this book, professor wu yucheng takes the scientific views and analyzes the culture of chinese zodiacs from the perspectives of astronomy, celestial phenomena, calendar, archaeology, myth, legend, modern works and literature and so on. all of the scientific illustrations are expressed vividly and all the works by previous scholars are analyzed and commented appropriately. in addition to books published, there are also a lot of academic articles on the origin and development of the culture of chinese zodiacs, for example, the article by zhou qingji (1989), huang jianrong (1994), ye shuxian (1998), ma yingchang (1999), zhang xitian (2001) and duan baolin (2004). secondly, in recent years the culture of chinese zodiacs has also aroused great interest in linguists who have analyzed the culture of chinese zodiacs from the perspectives of semantics, cross-cultural comparisons, translation, language variations and so on. for example, the article by li wangxia (1997) is a study of the cultural connotations of chinese zodiacs; li zheng (2001), liu ling (2004), tao zhenying (2005), l hongbo (2006) and ju jilan (2007) made cross-cultural comparisons between the different cultural meanings of chinese zodiac animal signs, while mao haiying (2003) studied the cultural metaphor of chinese zodiacs and its applications in teaching chinese as a foreign language. some articles on the translation of these culture-loaded culture expressions are also written by the following writers: huang fang (2002), jiang honghong (2004) and cao rong (2006). although pei-chin shih (2007) has indeed written a thesis on the chinese zodiac animals from the perspective of cognitive metaphor, she applied the theory of the great chain of beings to the analysis of the different connotations of these animals to men and women, and she used questionnaires to analyze the different connotations when the twelve chinese zodiac animals were used to describe men or women. thirdly, philosophers and psychologists also pay attention to the culture of chinese zodiacs, for example, huang jianrong (1998) and peng tao (2007) analyzed the philosophical basis of chinese zodiacs and its ordering principles. li yongxin(1995), zou danjie and wang xiaoyan (2006) discussed the relationships between chinese zodiac animals and human personality. wang guorong (2006) analyzed the psychological telegraphic effect of the conflicts between the twelve animals. in one word, although all these books and articles have analyzed the culture of chinese zodiacs from different perspectives, little work has been done about the c-z based metaphors. thus this thesis will take the old topic of chinese zodiacs expressions and the c-z based - 7 - metaphors as the object of study and re-examine them from the cognitive linguistic perspective. 2.2the study of metaphor as presented in chapter 1, the culture of chinese zodiacs implies a kind of animal metaphor: human beings are animals. the object of this thesis: c-z based metaphor is a special metaphor variation derived from the traditional culture of chinese zodiacs. as our study is from the perspectives of cognitive linguistics and metaphor, it is necessary for us to review relevant metaphor theories and studies of animal metaphors, especially c-z based metaphors before we move on. 2.2.1 an overview of metaphor theories classical theories of metaphor include the comparison theory, the substitution theory and the interaction theory. the comparison view can be traced back to aristotle, who regarded metaphors as implicit comparisons between a metaphorical expression and a literal paraphrase based on underlying analogy or similarity. the substitution view holds that a metaphor is where a metaphorical expression is used in place of some equivalent literal expressions. the interaction view, proposed by black, states that metaphorical meaning is a result of an interaction between a metaphorical expression, termed “focus”, and its surrounding literal “frame” (black, 1979: 23). all these metaphor theories share a common feature: they view metaphor as a linguistic figurative phenomenon, and assume a fundamental distinction between literal and figurative senses. the contemporary theory of metaphor, however, is revolutionary in many aspects. as lakoff points out, a huge system of conventional, conceptual schemas has been discovered structuring our everyday conceptual system and pervading our everyday language. “the discovery of this enormous metaphor system has destroyed the traditional literal-figurative distinction, because the term literal, as used in defining the traditional distinction, carries with it all those false assumptions”(lakoff, 1994: 44). lakoff and johnson (1980), in their work metaphors we live by, redefine the term “metaphor”. they argue that human thought processes are largely metaphorical, and the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured. metaphor is no longer a way of expression, but also a way of conceptualization (lakoff essential attributes lead to essential behavior; contingent attributes lead to contingent behavior. and the maxim of quantity is to be as informative as is required and not more so. it places extremely strong constraints on the application of the great chain and the generic is specific metaphor. the great chain metaphor is a tool of great power and scope. by linking the great chain with the generic is specific metaphor, it allows us to comprehend general human character traits in terms of well unders