A Study Of Interpretation Mechanism Of Sports Metaphor

Metaphor has been a hot topic in many scholars'schedules for thousands of years. Whether as a frequently employed rhetoric device or being taken for a way of human being thinking, the omnipresent metaphor is of great research significance. The present researches on metaphor tend to be done in more specific fields. Politics metaphor, economy metaphor, military metaphor, architecture metaphor, and art metaphor have been discussed from different angles. However, few scholars pay any attention to sports metaphor that is very abundant and characteristic in language. Therefore, sports metaphor is chosen as the research object of the current study.Not only does sports metaphor pervasively exist in the sports field, but also penetrates into every aspect of people's daily life in large quantities. Owing to the rapid development of sports and the intimate relation between sports and people's daily life, sports metaphor plays more and more important roles both in sports language and people's everyday expression. However, several sports metaphors make obstacles in understanding some sports language and people's everyday expressions. For instance:(1) Free agency with no salary cap awaits ambitious NFL owners.(2) The government scored an own goal with its harsh treatment of single parent.(3)辛普利西奥成功完成了中场"清道夫"的角色。(4)顶级赞助商踢出"世界波",三大赞助商盈亏盘点。Thus, the current study intends to make a tentative exploration of interpretation mechanism of sports metaphor from a new perspective of"Inheritance of Denotation-Connotation", and expects to provide a workable means to the comprehension of sports metaphor. The theoretical foundation of the current study is Professor Xu's Inheritance of Denotation-Connotation, which develops on the basis of Gestalt Theory, Stereotypical Relations, Logic of Taxonomy, and Type Hierarchy Structure. The theory has explored the production and interpretation mechanisms of rhetoric expressions as"A is B"from the perspective of denotation and connotation, and it offers a new model to the studies of metaphor, metonymy, personification, euphemism and so on.The current study applies Inheritance of Denotation-Connotation into the studies of the interpretation mechanism of sports metaphor,and makes two supplements to the metaphor analytical framework underlying the theoretical foundation, namely, the factor of context is added, and the crucial procedure of inheritance, the abstraction of a new category is made prominent. In the analyses of interpretation process of sports metaphor, the denotations and connotations of involved concepts are decomposed as required at first. Then the proper connotations are selected in accordance with the specific context. According to the Stereotypical Relations and a series of gestalt transformations, a new category is introduced, and the inheritance of denotation and connotation among source domain, target domain and the new category is recognized and established. In such a manner, sports metaphor is effectively and fully understood. The whole interpretation process of sports metaphor is clearly presented in the type hierarchy structures of the analytical framework. Besides, in order to have a better understanding of sports metaphor,the current study discusses the motivation for sports metaphor and classifies sports metaphors into some subtypes.Based on the analyses of sports metaphor, some major findings of the current study are concluded as follows:Firstly, apart form the metaphors in the sports field, the metaphors that are employed in people's everyday expressions and closely relevant to sports also should be considered as sports metaphor. For example,"the front runner","move the goalposts","擦边球","坐(冷)板凳". Thus, the scope of sports metaphor in the current study is much broader. This kind of sports metaphor that is usually neglected not only intimately relates to various aspects of people's daily life, but also reveals the way of human being thinking"understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in term of another"as exemplified in"Life is a journey","Love is a marathon","人生如棋"and so on.Secondly, some sports metaphor becomes or tends to be conventionalized metaphors, as the high-frequency employment. For example,"beat","season","triumph","赛程","主场","客场". As these over-familiar sports metaphors are understood effortlessly, few people have taken the interpretation mechanism of such metaphors into consideration. By means of the analytical framework of sports metaphor, the"concealed"inheritances of denotation and connotation in these sports metaphors can be clearly presented as well.Thirdly, there are two key factors influencing the understanding of sports metaphor in the interpretation mechanism. One is the inheritance of denotation and connotation the interpreter chooses. The comprehension of a sports metaphor varies with different selected inheritance relations. The other is the number of inheritance the interpreter perceives. Some sports metaphor can be effectively and fully understood with only one inheritance of denotation and connotation, while the sufficient comprehension of other sports metaphors may demand two or more inheritances. Briefly, the comprehensive understanding of a sports metaphor requires enough logic and commonsensible inheritance.In conclusion, the main significance of the thesis lies in the following aspects. First and foremost, the current study does some researches on sports metaphor that is seldom involved by the previous scholars and provides a palpable and workable analytical framework for the interpretation of sports metaphor. Then, the research on sports metaphor enriches the content of metaphor studies and extends the scope of sports metaphor. Lastly, the study of interpretation mechanism of sports metaphor can help people appreciate and participate in sports activities, and supply the content and expression ways of daily language with more fresh blood.