Are Lovers Edible: A Cognitive Study Of Ssfm

In both English and Chinese there exists an interesting linguistic phenomenon—people have the inclination to call their lovers, spouses or sexual partners sugar, honey, sweetie, etc. In essence, this is a kind of special metaphor in which opposite sex (including part or the whole of their bodies, especially sexual organs) are compared to edible substances. This kind of metaphor contains more or less sexual suggestion or is closely related to sex. This thesis names this kind of metaphor sexually suggestive food metaphor (hence after shortened as SSFM).Though SSFM is widely used in almost every type of literature and our everyday language, it has failed to arouse enough interests of linguists for a long time. A few scholars, such as Flexner (1975), Lakoff (1987) and Counihan (1999), did make some discussions about it. But their analyses are either too general or too obscure to provide a thorough and satisfactory explanation for this issue. This thesis is an attempt to figure out the generating mechanism of this linguistic phenomenon from the cognitive perspective through a qualitative analysis. And most parts of the study will be based on our introspections upon the issue.This thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. The first part of it introduces the background of the study. Next follow the key research questions, the methodology and data collection. The last part of this chapter is the overview of the thesis.Chapter Two is a literature review of previous studies on SSFM from the perspectives of psychology, social culture and cognition, pointing out some of the unsolved problems in this section.Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework, in which Maslow's theory of hierarchy of needs, Gestalt principles of proximity and similarity and Lakoff and Johnson's embodiment theory are briefly introduced so as to give a reasonable explanation of this linguistic phenomenon. Chapter Four begins with a working definition of SSFM, and the next two parts are classifications based on the features of target domain and source domain in SSFM respectively. The data observation shows that there are gender preference and food preference in SSFM—in most SSFMs, females (including part or the whole of their bodies, especially sexual organs) tend to be used as target domain (gender preference) while sweet food is inclined to be used as source domain (food preference).In Chapter Five, the generating mechanism of SSFM is being explored. The author proposes that SEX IS FOOD is the root metaphor of SSFM. According to Maslow, sex and food are two of the basic physiological needs of human and thus are in the same hierarchy. So in accordance with Gestalt principles of proximity and similarity, there is a small"distance"between them, namely, they are"proximal"and tend to be perceived as being somehow related to each other in our cognition; on the other hand, because food and sex are both lower needs when compared with higher needs like self-actualization, our need for food and need for sex have many similar characteristics and thus tend to be perceived as one common segment in our cognition. In the last part, Lakoff and Johnson's embodiment theory is applied to making further exploration on the realization of SSFM from a cognitive perspective. SSFM is realized through people's embodied experiences of food and sex.Chapter Six is mainly about gender preference and food preference in SSFM, the motivations of which are explored respectively based on the generating mechanism of SSFM. Gender preference is motivated by people's embodied experience of sex differences and gender inequality. The food preference in SSFM is rooted in the fact that our ancestors developed their preference for sweet taste through embodied experiences and gradually this preference was passed on in our genes. Food and sex are not only two of physiological needs of human but also two sensory pleasures experienced in our daily life. In particular, sweet food can give us great pleasurable sensation. Sweet food and opposite sex (including part or the whole of their bodies, especially sexual organs) thus tend to be perceived as one common segment in our perception and cognition.The last chapter of this thesis is the conclusion and the problems left open are mentioned so that more research work on this issue might be initiated.