A Study Of The Plant Metaphors In Guo Feng Via Conceptual Blending Theory

Metaphor is a common linguistic phenomenon, and meanwhile a fundamental andsignificant tool of cognition. Metaphors in Guo Feng are mainly used to expressindirectly the poets’ abstract ideas and emotions, which can not be explained in wordsclearly, or which would make people feel embarrassed to talk directly. As fundamentalelements in the writing of poems in Guo Feng, metaphors play an indispensable rolein them. From its production, metaphors in Guo Feng attract interest of all relatedresearch fields and fruitful accomplishment has been achieved in them. However, theauthor discovers that previous studies on metaphors in Guo Feng mainly concentrateon their decorative and rhetorical effects on the expression of poets’ ideas andemotions. Studies from a cognitive perspective to interpret the processes ofproduction and cognition in human’s minds are few, let alone the application of theConceptual Blending Theory to them.This thesis mainly aims to apply the Conceptual Blending Theory to interpretmeaning construction and the cognition of metaphors in Guo Feng, which helpsreaders to understand better the poets’ ideas and emotions by metaphoricalexpressions. What is more, by the analysis of some typical examples in Guo Feng, wecan also provide some evidences to its extensive explanatory power and sufficiency inillustrating the cognitive process of Chinese metaphors. In the light of CBT, twopractical strategies are suggested for improving the interpretation of the plantmetaphors in Guo Feng.