Metaphor Research On ChineseVocabulary Of Animal Category

It’s a long history for research on metaphor in Western and China:the western scholar Aristotle made a systematic study on the metaphor in "Poetics"; a unique understanding of metaphor has also been stated since ancient China, which pointed out that "observing objects outside, knowing nature inside" is a basic method to understand and describe things. However, the research on metaphor in ancient times was basically confined to the area of rhetoric. Until1980s, Lakoff and Johnson have proposed that, metaphor is not only a means of rhetoric, but also a human cognitive style. The human beings perceive abstract and strange things by concrete and familiar ones in the world. That is to say, in essence, metaphor is a mapping process from one cognitive domain to another. From then on, the theory brought the understanding of the metaphor to a new era.Animal is seen as the most important partner accompanied with human on the earth, which is also an important way of acknowledging the complex world by human beings. There is a large number of animal vocabulary in each language around the world, which are equipped with vivid images and profound cultural connotations. With such unique features, it is one of difficulties for overseas students to learn these words. In order to solve the problem, the thesis studies mapping laws of Chinese lexical metaphor of animal and helping students learn Chinese vocabulary from the perspective of cognition, which aims at providing direct help to teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the field of vocabulary teaching and improving the efficiency of the teaching.In this study, by collecting the common areas of animal in the Chinese vocabulary, the thesis makes preliminary interpretation as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis for metaphor of Chinese animal vocabulary law according to the mappings law. The thesis is divided into four parts:The first part is an introduction. It introduces the origin, significance and research status, in addition, it makes necessary demonstration for the source of corpus and research methods. The second part introduces the theoretical basis of this study-Metaphor Studies. It includes some knowledge of metaphor:concept, classification, nature, mechanism and essential characteristics.The third part discusses the metaphor law of the Chinese vocabulary of animal areas. First, it studies metaphors law to various types of the vocabulary of animals one by one from the micro-level. Next, it summarizes the study from the macro point Finally, it makes a reasonable interpretation of the law to make from various angles.The thesis summarizes the common Chinese vocabulary of animal areas, constructs preliminarily the complete system of vocabulary.The fourth part discusses the practical application of the results of this research in the process of Teaching of Foreign Language Vocabulary. This part primarily points out the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional vocabulary teaching. After that, it analyzes the necessity and feasibility of the use of metaphors law of vocabulary teaching. Finally, it explores and discusses specific ways and means of the application of the research results to the vocabulary teaching through practical examples.and opens up new ways and methods for vocabulary teaching of teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.