Metaphorical Coherence Between The Old Testament And The New Testament

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the discourse coherence of a metaphorical discourse is constructed by its metaphorical coherence through analyzing the metaphorical coherence between the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible and the relation between the metaphorical coherence of the two Testaments and their discourse coherence.Scholars of different linguistic schools tend to resort to the now prevailing cognitive science and cognitive linguistics to answer questions of their respective field. The relation between cognitive linguistics and systemic functional linguistics is becoming increasingly close. In their introduction of conceptual metaphor theories, Lakoff and Johnson discussed metaphorical coherence. Since then, researchers have begun to apply metaphorical coherence in studying the discourse coherence of some simple discourses. These studies demonstrate that the coherence of conceptual metaphor(s) in a metaphorical discourse is the mental premise of discourse coherence.In this thesis, metaphorical coherence is applied to a complex discourse, namely the Bible. The metaphorical expressions of LIGHT metaphor in the Bible are classified into different categories (conceptual metaphors), and despite the fact that the categories in the New Testament differ from those in the Old Testament, these conceptual metaphors in the two Testaments have common metaphorical entailments. According to Lakoff and Johnson, these common metaphorical entailments characterize the metaphorical coherence of the two Testaments. Their metaphorical coherence constructs the coherence of the central concept of the Bible--GOD'S GRACE, thus the two Testaments gain the mental premise of discourse coherence.Besides, some definitions such as metaphorical discourse, metaphorical entailment, metaphorical transfer and metaphorical analogy are adjusted and redefined in this thesis to strengthen their explaining force.