Studies On Chrysanthemum Poems In A Dream Of Red Mansions From Systemic Functional And Cognitive Perspectives

Former studies about the poems in A Dream of Red Mansions are concentrated on the researches from Literary, Theory of Literature and Art and Aesthetics perspectives. As for Linguistics, researches mostly focus on vocabularies, syntax, dialects and other similar problems. Scholars who study foreign languages do lots of researches from systemic functional and cognitive perspectives, but their achievements are built on the basis of translation and language comparison, not involving the original works. Therefore, in this research paper I attempt to discuss the chrysanthemum poems, which occur in Chapter38in this novel, with Three Metafunctions’ theories in Systemic Functional Linguistics as well as Metaphor theory and Schema Theory in Cognitional Linguistics.Discourse Analysis is an important component in Linguistics studies. The theoretical construction and research methods of Systemic Function Linguistics are improving and being perfect during the development, which provide a scientific, effective and solid foundation for my discussion and conclusion in this paper. Meanwhile, the researches are also expanding to discourse analysis in Cognitional Linguistics’ field. The cognitive factors which can impact the process when people generate and understand the discourse are receiving more attention now, Metaphor Theory and Schema Theory in particular. Those theories function strongly to explain the importance of cultural, contextual, emotional and other relevant factors and how they influence people’s cognitive process.On the other hand, it is somewhat new research method to analyze the poems in A Dream of Red Mansions by using functional and cognitive theories. Past linguistic researches on the poems concentrated on vocabularies, syntax and dialects in the novel text. Functional discourse analysis research theses are increasing in recent years. However, these researches almost focus on dialogues and chapter titles, rather than poems. There are no articles on chrysanthemum poems so far. While the cognitive analysis focuses on comparison among different language translation versions, the ones which study original version text are comparatively few. It is to some extent recent advance to do functional and cognitional analysis research on chrysanthemum poems.Hence, I aim at analyzing the poems from functional and cognitive perspectives with theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitional Linguistics. The original text is the scope of this research and the chrysanthemum poems which occur in chapter38are analysis target. My attempt is to explain and analyze the poems from linguistic perspective. I will discuss the metafunctions embedded in the text and the implication in relevant contexts and how these functions are under the influence of people’s cognitive psychological factors and reflected in the poems accordingly. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as explanation according to actual data, I will study how discourse forms are affected by linguistic forms, thinking modes and cultural factors. I will also discuss the differences among each character’s linguistic habits, cultural background and ways of thinking as well.Ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function represent individual personality characteristics, aesthetic taste and spiritual pursuit in chrysanthemum poems based on Three Metafunction Theory with systemic functional view. Lin Daiyu interact with flowers more in spiritual level and her performance is quiet and lonely. Jia Baoyu does lots of actions, but he is lack of spirit communication with chrysanthemum. Xue Baochai’s behaviors are appropriate to the circumstance and time, and her subjective attitude is ambiguous to readers. Shi Xiangyun loves chrysanthemum much because of its reclusion and solitude, which imply the life of a hermit who is far from mundane society. Jia Tanchun shows some emotions that she likes, but is not addicted to chrysanthemum.Metaphors and schemas are distinct with obvious features viewed from cognitive perspective. Limited by various factors, similar images and classical allusions can be found in those poems, whereas each character’s characteristics is revealed precisely simultaneously. Moreover, different subjective feeling and experience are demonstrated in implication schemas. Daiyu has a lot of similarities with the spirits represented by chrysanthemum so that her feeling fluctuate strongly in her poems, while Chrysanthemum fails to trigger any subjective feeling of Baoyu. From Baochai’s poems readers can identify that she enjoys the beautiful view of flowers in an easy mind. Xiangyun regards chrysanthemum as her bosom friends whereas Tanchun treats flowers as a part of decoration and banquet activities so she doesn’t concern with the withering of chrysanthemum very much.Generally speaking, combined with previous research results, these twelve chrysanthemum poems embody the author Cao Xueqin’s poetry creative conception and demonstrate each character’s unique disposition and aesthetic taste effectively from systemic functional and cognitive perspectives. In the meantime the author implies the character’s individual feature vaguely as well. His handling approaches are skillful and mastered on the level of art achievement.It stands to reason that there are many deficiencies in my research due to the knowledge and competence restrictions. For instance, I may omit some problems which are worth discussing in analyzing with Three Metafunctional Theories. In addition, when I analyze the poems from cognitive perspective, studies of poetic rhyme, classical metre and tone patterns are to some extent inadequate. Besides, my research does not involve the comparison between the original text and translated versions in functional and cognitive respects. I do hope that I will have a chance to improve my study to supplement those imperfections in the future.