A Pragmatic Study Of Metaphor In Zen Conversations

This research is a pragmatic study of metaphor in Zen conversations, which arethose held between Zen masters and their disciples in the special Zen context. Zenmasters in the process of the conversation intend to help the disciples get enlightenedthrough indirect ways of speaking, among which one is to speak metaphorically.Metaphor can thus be regarded as a pragmatic strategy adopted by Zen masters intheir conversations.Based on this, three research questions are put forward:(1) What features do themetaphorical utterances in Zen conversations have?(2) How does metaphor as astrategy make the Zen masters’ utterances achieve their enlightening aim?(3) Why ismetaphor as a strategy adopted by Zen masters to achieve the enlightening aim of theirutterances?Before tackling these three research questions, a definition of the object of theresearch is given. As stated previously, this research regards metaphor in Zenconversations as a pragmatic strategy, that is, when the Zen master seemingly talksabout a concrete entity but actually implies another abstract metaphysical entity ofZen Buddhism, he is using such a strategy. In the light of this definition, all Zenconversations where metaphor as a strategy is adopted are identified and collectedfrom the data source of this study, i.e., Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp,from which100conversations are chosen at random for qualitative analysis.This study is carried out on the basis of Sperber and Wilson’s (2001,2002)relevance theory. And after a qualitative analysis of the targeted data within thisframework, the author has made the following three findings.Firstly, the metaphorical utterances in Zen conversations have the following threefeatures: they have contextual implications in certain contexts; the contextualimplications of the metaphorical utterances are intended by the Zen masters to berecognized by the disciples; to discover these contextual implications is not easy andthus requires the efforts of the disciples. Secondly, metaphor as a strategy makes the Zen masters’ utterances achieve theirenlightening aim through helping them achieve their optimal relevance, and is thusregarded in this thesis as a relevance-optimizing strategy. There are two ways inwhich metaphor makes these utterances achieve their optimal relevance. One isthrough triggering a strong implicature and a series of premises which justify thisimplicature, and the other is through triggering a wide array of weak implicatures and aseries of corresponding premises.Finally, metaphorical utterances enjoy a kind of poetic effect which is broughtabout through a wide array of weak implicatures. On one hand, this effect reflects theprinciple of economy in communication. On the other hand, it is in great harmonywith the core principle of ‘facilitating enlightenment’ of Zen communication and thederived Zen instructional principle of ‘never tell too plainly’. These findings unveil thereasons why Zen masters adopt metaphor to help the disciples to get enlightened.