-绝望的主妇隐喻研究-英语

1、郑州大学毕业论文题目:Analysis of Metaphor in Desperate Housewives绝望的主妇隐喻研究 学生姓名： 田 磊 学 号： 20115410527 指导教师： 李文竞 职 称： 讲 师 院（系）： 护理学院 年 级： 2011 专 业： 双学位 班 级： 6 完成时间： 2015年 5 月 29 日 Analysis of Metaphor in Desperate Housewives Tian Lei A Thesis Submitted as Partial RequirementsFor the Bachelors Degree of Arts in

2、 EnglishSupervised by Li WenjingSchool of Foreign Languages Zhengzhou UniversityMay 29, 2015摘 要 美国语言学家莱可夫和约翰逊在我们赖以生存的隐喻中首先提出概念隐喻的理论。他们认为:“隐喻渗透于日常生活,不但渗透在语言里,也渗透在思维和活动中。我们借以思维和行动的普通概念系统在本质上基本上是隐喻的。”隐喻不仅仅是一种语言上的想象力，而且在本质上是人类理解周围世界的一种感知和形成概念的工具。隐喻无处不在,影响着人类的思维和行为，它通过感知理解投射到现实生活中,深化并内化相关的文化内核,进而更好地理解艺术作

3、品的主题。绝望的主妇是美国 ABC 公司拍摄的一部风靡全球的畅销电视剧，其获得巨大成功的因素是多方面的，其中最具特色的是电视剧中的隐喻，在电视剧中应用了大量的隐喻，它们对这部电视剧起到了提炼与深化主题的作用。关键词：绝望的主妇；隐喻Abstract American linguisticians Lakoff & Johnson are the first men who put forward the concept of metaphor theory in their artical Metaphors We Live By. In their words : metaphor

4、can be found in our everyday life, not only in the language, but also in our thinking and kinds of activities. The concept system in which our thinking and action is metaphorical in nature. Metaphor is not only a kind of imagine in language, but also a kind of tool in which people aware and form the

5、 image concept when we see the world around us. Metaphor is in our daily life, which do something about our thinking and behavioral patterns. It shows what we think about to the real life. Whats more, it makes the related culture deepen and internalize to help us to realize the theme of the movie. D

6、esperate Housewives is a popular American TV play in the global world which is filmed by ABC Company. Of course, there are many factors to its success, but it is unique that the application of metaphor in the movie. A lot of metaphors found in the movie, helping refine and deepening the theme.Key wo

7、rds:Desperate housewives;Metaphors Acknowledgements Upon writing this thesis, my deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor Wenjing Li, for her guidance, patience and the advice her gives me. This thesis has been completed under her guidance. She has helped me to revise several times

8、 and provided constructive suggestions. Besides, I would like thanks to the teachers who give me classes in the past several years, without them I cant go through my thesis so quickly. At Last, my thanks would go to my roommates who gave me a hand facing the difficulties in the hard periods of this

9、thesis. OutlineI. Introduction A. The purpose of the Study B. Innovation Point and Significance of the StudyII. Review on Metaphor A. Definition B. The Characteristics of Metaphor C. Studies of Grammatical Metaphor at Home and AbroadIII. Metaphor Characters in Desperate Housewives A. A Brief Introdu

10、ction to Desperate Housewives B. Metaphors Used in Desperate HousewivesIV.Conclusion iiiAnalysis of Metaphor in Desperate HousewivesI. IntroductionA. The purpose of the Study For a long time metaphor has become one of the major topics. It has attracted the attention from more and more scholars and t

11、heorists. Metaphors are mostly culturally specific because their values depends on the readers' understanding. This paper aims to study on metaphor from the perspective of oral communication. Since Desperate Housewives is a popular American TV series which has attracted audiences from different

12、cultural backgrounds all over the world. Many scholars have shown great interest in it and made their study focus on its humorous language, feminine language features, and its subtitle translation. However, studies on its rhetorical devices,especially on metaphor are rare. This thesis is to enrich t

13、he study on this TV series by analyzing metaphors in Desperate Housewives .B. Innovation Point and Significance of the Study The innovation point and the contents of the Study are as follows: With the rapid growth in developing countries, there are 70% of the people are middle class in February 2009

14、 according to the survey. It suggests that the number of middle class has already reached a new top.And they do not live from hand to mouth as they usually do, and they go after not only the basic food and shelters but also the consumer goods even the luxury. They spend money to improve their health

15、 level and provide for their childrens better education. As language can reflect the attitudes and values of the speakers, we can analyze the mechanism of the metaphor used by the speakers and with it we can better find and realize the hidden attitudes and values of the speakers. We see and know mor

16、e about the daily social status and the values of the American after our analysis of grammatical metaphor used in the TV series. As we all know, most of works of literatures or films or TV series reflect the real lives. If we study the language features of these works deeper, we can further understa

17、nd the cultural of gender difference in language usage and realize the culture of a country better. Whats more, the studies of metaphorical theory are mostly applied on written language. As far as I know the study on spoken language focusing on metaphor are rare. In my study I try my best to analysi

18、s the study of grammatical metaphor to spoken language. In my study I mainly study the grammatical metaphor. Thanks to this, students can better understand the TV shows, such as the relationship between characters, their social status and so on, instead of just knowing the literal meaning or grammar

19、 structures of sentences. At the same time, from the TV shows I learn to use right words in proper place. It is a necessary lesson for us to cultivation a good sense to use the right words in right place. For English, it has amassed intuitive knowledge about linguistic appropriateness and correctnes

20、s. Compared with the aborigines of English, foreign students are not doing well in the situations and customs of English speaking countries; as a result, they are at a sea in this matter sometimes. Depend on it, if they never learn stylistics, they are always not aware of the difference between comm

21、on and rare types of language behavior. Whats more, they are not aware of the alternatives available in particular situations; they cannot react appropriately to language right. What they know is only what they are taught in language classes. For what we talk above, for the point to make students be

22、tter in foreign languages study, we should cultivate their sense of styles.II.Review on Metaphor Metaphor, a popular phenomenon, is widely used at all times. This part is mainly an introduction to metaphor and previous studies on it.A. Definition Metaphor comes from the Greek word “Metaphora”. The r

23、oot "meta-"means“over”and“phora” implies “carry”. The compounding word relates to linguistic process, through which the characteristics of a certain object could be transferred to another one, in the effect that the second object could be taken as the first one. In Webster s New World Dict

24、ionary, metaphor is defined as :“a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of as if were the other; implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily use of one thing is applied to another " . George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

25、 said that “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another" . They also put forward the well-known term “conceptual metaphor” in their work Metaphors We live by. From all over the above, we can find metaphor is considered as a matter of language,

26、 or a rhetorical device, which makes comparison between two elements that, bears some similarities. However, this comparison is implied rather than stated. It is taken as a figure of speech that used for some special effects, as well as an art that only masters of language know how to employ. In thi

27、s definition, similarities between the two elements are mentioned, but they are just within the scope of language instead of something related to people's cognition. According to them, metaphor is not just a matter of language. It is the systematic mapping from source domain to target domain. It

28、 is related to people's thinking and cognition. This is the view of contemporary metaphor study, which is from the view of cognition. The definitions of metaphor is different for the very perspectives and different scholars. However, there is something in common in the above definitions. Metapho

29、r is mainly the resemblance or similarity between two similar elements: the image and the object. We cannot call it a metaphor if the two elements are not similar in all of their respects.B. The Characteristics of Metaphor Generally speaking, metaphor has the following characteristics: Tenor refers

30、to the literal meaning. Vehicle refers to the figurative meaning. The element that is not overly stated is ground , which serves as the likeness perceived between the tenor and the vehicle. Every metaphor is implicitly of the form “X is like Y in respect of Z”(X is the tenor, Y is the vehicle and Z

31、is the ground). As we all know, metaphor is not what it literally means. The context determines the implied meaning. Besides, the conflicting understanding course makes the meaning of metaphor different from the literal meaning. However, when there is conflict between the literal meaning and the inv

32、olved context, we choose metaphorical meaning which is another kind of understanding and consistent with the context. Metaphor is in essence a self-contradictory and self-destructive phenomenon. Metaphor must be produced in a particular context, which means the context is a key factor that influence

33、s metaphor greatly.C. Studies of Grammatical Metaphor at Home and Abroad Aristotle came up with the exploration of metaphor Two thousand years ago. In his rhetoric and poetics, he talked about metaphor many times. In his point, metaphor can add charm and distinguishing features to familiar styles, w

34、hich provides a theoretical basis for later researchers to study metaphor from the perspective of rhetoric. While the history is long, it was Aristotle who began the research on metaphor. But the study of metaphor is blooming in 20th century. Later, scholars began to study metaphor from different di

35、mensions.Scholars such as Ricoeur(1977), Ortony(1993)and Lakoff(1980)explained metaphor from a cognitive perspective, considering metaphor as not only a rhetoric phenomenon but also a cognitive model closely relevant to language, nation and culture. Cognitive metaphor theory innovatively researches

36、metaphor through the relationship between language and thought,but metaphor research from rhetoric perspective to cognitive one is no more than a shift of researching angles, still failing to see the relationship between metaphor and society and values. In our country, the first man who paid his att

37、ention in the study is linguistics Hu Zhuanglin. He initiates and leads the study of grammatical metaphor in China. It is Hu Zhuanglin who first claims the long existence of grammatical metaphor and then he challenges to make a definition for congruency and summarizes five criteria from the joint wo

38、rks by Halliday and Martin to distinguish incongruent realizations from their congruent counterparts. In a word, grammatical metaphor is getting more and more attentions. Scholars at home and abroad join in the study of grammatical metaphor. However most of the studies are focused on written languag

39、e, there searches on spoken language is still rare. Halliday believes that spoken language is a style as well: its application to metaphor is not only arbitrary but also restricted and affected by certain mechanism, which is the social status and values of the speakers. This is undoubtedly a vast fi

40、eld, but the present researches are few. This thesis aims to use metaphorical discourse in Desperate Housewives as researching materials and analyzes the mechanism of metaphor based on register theory and appraisal system to reveal the real social status and awkward faced by American middle-class wo

41、men. It is a succession of metaphor study that the development from rhetorical metaphor through cognitive metaphor to grammatical metaphor. Whats more, the deepening of metaphor research reflects a general rule of humans cognition: from surface (literal research in rhetorical metaphor) to deep (rese

42、arch of cognitive metaphor), from phenomena to essence and then from inner structure (study inside language system on the layer of lexical-rhetorical metaphor and cognitive metaphor) to outer (relationship between language and society-grammatical metaphor). That reflects the trend of human's rec

43、ognition. Thus it can be found that rhetorical metaphor and cognitive metaphor laid a solid foundation for metaphor study, and grammatical metaphor greatly expands the scope of metaphor study.III. Metaphor Characters in Desperate Housewives In this chapter, the strategies of translating metaphors in

44、 Desperate Housewives will be discussed.A. A Brief Introduction to Desperate Housewives Desperate Housewives is a popular American television series produced by Marc Cherry. It has enjoyed great popularity among audience all over the world and has been translated into many languages such as French,

45、Japanese and German. It was reported to be the most popular show in its demographic worldwide, with the number of audience is approximately 120 million , whats more it was reported that the series, was the third most watched TV show in a study of ratings in 20th countries. Desperate Housewives was f

46、irst introduced to China in December, 2005 and was played on CCTV. However, it wasn't well received at that time. Then it was released online and attracted the attention of many people, especially students and white-collar ladies. It was translated by more than one translation studio. It tells a

47、 story which happened in the street of Wisteria Lane in the fictional American town of fair view in the Eagle State. The TV begins with the suicide of a housewife named Mary Alice Young. She killed herself, at the same time, thats she who serves as a watcher, told the following story of her neighbor

48、s alive, another four housewives: Susan Mayer, Lynette Scavo, Bree Van De Kamp and Gabrielle Solis. Susan is kind-hearted but sometimes simple-minded; Lynette is the mother of four unmanageable kids. While Bree is a woman who pursues perfection and pays so much attention to details. She excels in co

49、oking and doing her household duties. Gaby, who is pretty and sexy, is an ex-model with everything and she's ever wanted a rich husband, a big house, but she still cannot be satisfied. The series mainly focuses on the daily life of the four housewives. The monologues and conversations in the ser

50、ies are natural and vivid, full of rhetorical devices,and metaphors can be found in so many situations. This part is an analysis of metaphor in Desperate Housewives.B. Metaphors Used in Desperate Housewives Metaphor is not only a common linguistic phenomenon, but also a deepening cognition on human.

51、 It belongs to the field of cognitive linguistics. Film and television works are the language, images and music integrated art form. It can not only carry the theme of ideas though the film lines, but also can be combined on the television screen for strengthening the cognitive and deepening the imp

52、ression. The classic ending art of Desperate housewives was deeply described in the perspective of a woman who has been in heaven. By using metaphor, it deepened the film and television works. At the same time, the American middle class womans life and values were profoundly analyzed. In the Despera

53、te housewives, Apples culture allusions and real life were skillfully combined though the lens of a movie. Though the metaphor meaning of apple, it let the audience to think about the perception of life, life reflection, abstract reasoning for the expression of specific. Meanwhile, it deeppen the th

54、eme of the movie. The films thoughts and feelings became more and more plentiful and substantial. So it achieved good artistic effects. In the beginning of the Desperate housewives, four housewife hands with an apple was a metaphor, which mean that they must must make a choice. Apple is a metaphor f

55、or the hard choices. The cultural connotation in the Desperate housewives has also been well represented, distributed a great charm.Facing the difficulties in life, four housewives always wanted to make a different choice. The image of the apple reflecting the metaphor can be found everywhere in our

56、 life. Lynette Scavo. After being full-time housewife for 7 years, Lynette decides to return to the work. On the first day,she is nervous, and her husband perceives her abnormal. He asks her:“ nervous ?” She replies“ Ive been out of work for seven years, Im a woman of a certain age in a business tha

57、t values youth above all else. Why should I be nervous ?”In this expression,“ Why should I be nervous ?” is a metaphor, and its consistent tone type is“ I am nervous ”. Through the same type, we know that she was very nervous, but she uses the expression of grammatical metaphor to cover her nervous. Because she is a very strong and confident woman. She would not reveal herself in front of other people confidence, even if its her husband. Bree Van De Kamp. Bree is a perfect housewife in the eyes of her neighbors outside, but her family doesnt fall for it. Her son mocked