A Corpus-based Study On The Metaphor In English For Science And Technology

Metaphor is not only a common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life, but also a prevalent linguistic feature existing in the scientific and technological articles. Western research on metaphor began with Aristotle and from then on, metaphor research experienced the comparison theory, the substitution theory, the interaction theory and the cognitive approach which is encouraged just recently. The various schools of linguists have contributed a great deal to the development of metaphor research.Compared with other approaches, cognitive linguistics is a relatively new-emerging branch. However, since the introduction of cognitive linguistics into China, both China and foreign countries have developed great interest in the cognitive approach to metaphor, bringing wealthy achievements to the metaphor theories. This great result is mainly because cognitive linguistics interprets metaphor in a totally different way. It tries to explain the production, acquisition and the inner mechanism of metaphor; it illustrates the connection between metaphor and cognitive structure. According to the theory of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is not an abnormal linguistic phenomenon but a thinking mode. Thus it exists in various types of texts. But the previous studies on metaphor focus only on literary works and most of them adopt theoretical analysis. While the corpus-based studies on metaphor are not concerned with scientific and technological articles. Therefore, research on metaphor in English for Science and Technology will be the target of this dissertation.This dissertation aims to study metaphor phenomena from the cognitive perspective. With the assistance of corpus linguistics, the author analyses the categories of conceptual metaphor in English for Science and Technology. The author also analyses which frequently used words can represent the three categories of metaphor. Finally, this analysis is for better comprehension and translation of metaphor in English for Science and Technology.This dissertation includes five parts:introduction, literature review, theoretical framework, methodology (corpus linguistics), summary of metaphor features based on corpus statistics, and the last, the conclusion of this research.This research design ensures the reliability and strictness. The author draws the following conclusions through research:(1), English for Science and Technology has its own style and features. Although rigorous language is used in EST, yet we can see large quantity of metaphor. Metaphor is an essential linguistic phenomenon in English for Science and Technology because from the cognitive perspective, metaphor is a thinking mode. Besides, science and technology is the source of metaphor, and so a lot of metaphors that people are familiar come from the combination of EST vocabulary.(2), Research shows that metaphor is in reality a mapping process. In order to better understand and translate metaphor in EST, readers shall consciously lay emphasis on acquiring the ability of mapping and imagination. When mapping process was mastered by the reader, a series of metaphor associated with mapping can be understood and translated quickly.(3), Corpus can carry on the quantitative analysis of the scientific and technological texts. Clear summary of linguistic features of texts is available through analyzing word frequencies. This kind of research method is more direct and accurate. In this dissertation, through analyzing frequencies of the most frequently used metaphorical words, it can be seen that the option of English for Science and Technology for metaphorical words has its tendency.This dissertation attempts to enrich the theory of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Especially, the author tries to discuss the role that metaphor plays in English for Science and Technology by analyzing corpus in hope of achieving better understanding and translating. This dissertation will also attempt to validate the interpretation ability of the theories of cognitive linguistics, especially conceptual metaphor’s explanation of metaphor in EST. Therefore, this dissertation is a quantitative research of the metaphor in English for Science and Technology.