Cognitive Construction And Interpretation Of Synaesthetic Metaphor

Synaesthesia, also called synaesthetic metaphor, is a common phenomenon in human language just as metaphor. Traditionally, synaesthesia is treated as a figure of speech that is used to moderate the language in texts. Later with the development of cognitive linguistics, synaesthetic metaphor is viewed as a way of cognition in the cognitive linguistics. Generally speaking, synaesthetic metaphor is an interaction between two or more sensory organs. In fact, sense is sentience of self perception which is natural to all living beings. People live in the universe mainly own five basic senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing and vision. Besides, synaesthetic metaphor (as a method of cognition) has its own psychological, physiological, neurological and cognitive basis. Among them, the cognitive analysis plays a vital role to the study of synaesthetic metaphor. And there are two theories to support this special kind of analysis. They are Conceptual Metaphorical Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory.This thesis makes a detailed classification towards synaesthetic metaphor. Based on the hierarchical distribution of synaesthetic metaphor, it can be divided into six kinds: the transfer from taste to other senses; the transfer from touch to other senses; the transfer from smell to other senses; the transfer from hearing to other senses; the transfer from vision to other senses and mixed sensations. Besides, the main content of this thesis is the construction and interpretation of synaesthetic metaphor. We all know: the synaesthesia is often used in literature discourse as a figure of speech at first. Then, people begin to gradually realize the other identification of synaesthetic metaphor, that is: a method of cognition. In cognitive background, synaesthetic metaphor is used in our daily language, especially in advertising. This thesis just aims to analyze the cognitive construction and interpretation of synaesthetic metaphor by means of two language forms; they are literature discourse and advertising discourse.This thesis mainly uses the descriptive and the comparative methods to conduct the research. We all know: synaesthetic metaphor is not only applied in literature language, but also widely used in human being's daily language, especially the advertising language. So the thesis makes a specific explanation towards the cognitive construction and interpretation of synaesthetic metaphor in literature and advertising by means of some specific examples, and also introduces the esthetic value and practical significance of synaesthetic metaphor used in advertising. In brief, the deep study on the synaesthetic metaphor is helpful to rich the content of rhetoric, and further explains the synaesthetic metaphor in the language function and the application principle.