Study On Li Bai's Poetical Metaphor Based On The Relevance Theory

Lakoff and Johson give a definition to metaphor:the essence of metaphor is to use another thing to comprehend and experience one thing (Lakoff and Johnson,2001). They think that metaphor is not only a language phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon and a method of thought. Metaphor is the basic element of forming the poetry, the foundation of creating the poetry. The poet endows more meanings and deeper connotations to poetry through the metaphor; meanwhile, the application of metaphor materializes the poet's metaphysical feeling and inspires the poet's different emotions. On this account, the reader comprehends the poet's intention easily through metaphor. In addition, the poet makes the poetry more complicated with the expression of metaphor. In this condition, comprehension of metaphor becomes the key point in understanding the poetry.The traditional comprehension of metaphor is based on finding similarity between vehicle and tenor; what's more, it lays emphasis on the metaphor effects and its beautification of poetry. Consequently, it ignores the process of metaphor creation and the reader's cognitive process in comprehension. Although some researchers involve their researches on poetry, they just do a simple research on English poetry or Chinese poetry, not do an overall research on a certain period or on a certain poet in the cognitive field. In this case, this thesis accounts the poetical metaphor of Chinese famous poet Li Bai from the perspective of Relevance Theory.According to Shu Dingfang and Hu Zhuangling's classification in poetical metaphor, this thesis divides Li Bai's poetry into six poetical metaphors, and accounts them from relevance principle, relevance context and relevance inferential. On this study, this thesis considers that the poet follows cognitive principle in poetry creation; moreover, the reader's comprehension of the poetry realizes the communicative principle. In other words, the reader'scomprehension is an ostensive-inferential process, namely, it is a non-demonstrative inferential model according to the ostensive information adopted by the poet. Under different cognitive and communicative circumstances, the reader understands the poet's intention through analyzing relevance information.Then, this study finds that the poetical metaphor can be applied in many aspects. Firstly, it can be applied in political lecture, which increases the cultural connotation and helps audience's to understand the lecturer's intention. Secondly, it can be applied in entertainment, which adds affection to lyrics and dialogues. Thirdly, it can be applied in literature, which makes the novel more vivid. Finally, it can also be adopted in advertisement and in daily life. Therefore, one chapter of this thesis investigates the application of poetical metaphor, which sheds light on poetical metaphor research.