A Cognitive Study Of Lexical Metaphors In The Chinese Language

This dissertation presents a study of the motivation of language use on the basis of lexical metaphors in The Chinese Dictionary (The Commercial Press Edition) (CDCPE), aiming to reveal how linguistic and non-linguistic factors influence language use, to examine the generalisability of present cognitive theories of language, and to contribute to cognitive theories of language, and a tentative framework of metaphorical studies in Chinese language is formulated.The Corpus of Lexical Metaphors in The Chinese Dictionary (The Commercial Press Edition) (CLMCD) was built with the use of Visual Foxpro 6.0, lexical metaphors in CDCPE were collected and tagged according to the target and source domain concepts of the metaphor, and the tagged data can be indexed by different conditions. Analysis of CLMCD shows that metaphorically expressed concepts mainly center around TIME, QUALITY, STATE and EXTENT of things and human beings, HUMAN BEING and concepts related to HUMAN BEING Among source domain concepts, concepts in some categories (SPACE, OBJECT, NATURE, concepts related to NATURE, PLANT, ANIMAL, FIRE, HUMAN BEING and concepts related to HUMAN BEING) are widely used to express target concepts in almost all categories, and concepts in other categories (COLOR, TIME, NUMBER, RELIGION, concepts related to RELIGION, STAR, QI, HUN and PO) are only used to express target concepts in certain categories, and the meanings of the latter group are determined culturally.Analysis of the correlations between the source and target domain concepts reveals that the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of things in terms of another that is familiar to and known well to people. However, KNOWN/UNKNOWN and FAMILIAR/UNFAMILIAR are only relative concepts. Due to different requirements and different levels of cognition, abstract and difficult-to-understand concepts can be used as source domain concepts in metaphors, and concepts that are quite familiar to people can also be used as target domain concepts.This study confirms some of the central claims of cognitive linguistics that language use mainly involves mappings from concrete and simple concepts to abstract and complex ones, and that language use is greatly influenced by human experience. Concepts from concrete and familiar categories are frequently used as source domain concepts to understand target domain concepts. The use and meaning of them are determined by human experience.Cognitive mapping is complex, and abstract and difficult concepts can also be used as source domain concepts in understanding. Although human cognition is based on people's experience in the world and their understanding of it, some religious concepts and cultural beliefs, which are deeply rooted in human mind, are also used as source domain concepts in understanding. This shows the complexity of human cognition and the fundamental place of religion and beliefs.The present study expands the scope of motivation of language, which is both historical and religious in addition to experiential. Experientialism only emphasizes the function of direct experience of human beings on language use, but fails to account for the function of indirect experience and religious factors. New understandings of motivation are put forward to complement the present claims.This study has implications for FL teaching and learning, and the teaching of culture. The result is more applicable to the learning and teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, since this study focuses on the Chinese language. Source domain concepts in metaphors reflect cultural factors that influence language use, and relevant cultural knowledge can help language users to overcome difficulties caused by cultural differences and to understand language better. Besides, this study has implications for the teaching of culture. The source domain concepts discussed in this dissertation provide an answer to the question of what to teach in the teaching of culture because they are the most deeply entrenched cultural factors that influence both language use and human thought.This study inevitably bears shortcomings due to limitations of time and energy. It should be replicated with a larger corpus to confirm the generalisability of the findings and to complement the present study. Therefore, toward the end of the dissertation, some suggestions for further research are offered in the hope that further study of motivation will be conducted to construct a better theory of cognitive studies of language and provide more reliable basis for language teaching and learning.