Image-building And Conceptual Metaphor In Modern English Haiku

Modern English haiku is a unique poetry form, originated in Japan and borrowed and developed both in forms and composing rules. But the dominant artistic feature remains—a single and simple image with suchness and presentness in very few words, stimulating readers to reflect upon the meaning of being and value of themselves. The image-building process is made up of two phases:image creation (by the poet) and image re-creation (by the reader). The meaning in an image and the value of a haiku poem is realized by efforts from both sides. The primary interest of this thesis is in the working mechanism of this image-building process. By going through the studies and theories of metaphor, we attempt to seek the possibility of establishing a bond between image-building and conceptual metaphor theory, which treats metaphor as a cognitive device, as the nature of our thought, thus also the nature of our language. On the basis of the theory, a "Perceptive-Logic Identification" mechanism is conceived here, and hopefully that can explain both how the image-building process and conceptual metaphor work.