A Cognitive Study On The Metaphorical Expressions In Inner Mongolia Grassland Song Lyrics

The study on metaphor has been experienced for a long history of over two thousand years which spans from traditional to cognitive perspective of metaphor. The earliest study on metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle’s time. Since then, lots of linguists have made researches on metaphors and put forward many theories, such as comparison theory, substitution theory and interaction theory. However, all these studies are more or less limited to rhetoric level.In 1980s, Lakoff and Johnson who are American linguists published their master work Metaphors We Live by, which shifted the way of researching metaphor, regarding it more as the cognitive nature than the rhetorical function. In the book, Lakoff and Johnson proposed the Conceptual Metaphor Theory for the first time. Conceptual metaphor theory maintains that metaphor is cognitive in essence, not merely a matter of language phenomenon. It structures the ways we perceive and experience this world. People’ s thought and behavior are more or less metaphorically in a conscious or unconscious way. Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory brought about a metaphor revolution and made the world enter into a metaphorical era.As a kind of artistic language, grassland songs have a great effect on Inner Mongolia people. They regard grassland songs as an important part in their life. Recently, Inner Mongolia grassland songs attract more and more scholars’ attentions. But most studies on Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics are limited to the perspectives of aesthetics, acoustics and cultural identification. In order to provide a new angle for the study of Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics, the author makes a deep analysis on Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics from the perspective of cognitive metaphor.This thesis carries out an analysis on the conceptual metaphor in Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics under the framework of conceptual metaphor theory by adopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative study shows the frequency and percentages of three types of conceptual metaphors. The qualitative study is applied to analyze these three types of conceptual metaphors in lyrics to show the working mechanism of metaphor and the way of people decoding abstract concepts.The findings of this study are:first, there are a large number of metaphors in Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics, which demonstrates the pervasiveness of conceptual metaphor. Second, in these three types of conceptual metaphors, ontological metaphor occupies the highest percentage of 70%, while structural metaphor and orientational metaphor are the second and the third respectively. Different frequency represents different roles that three types of metaphors play in people’s understanding of the grassland song lyrics. Third, based on the results of both quantitative and qualitative studies, it can be found that the conceptual metaphors in Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics have their unique features, reasons of formation and their own functions.The analysis of this thesis has both theoretical and practical significance. On the one hand, this study not only provides a new angle for the study of Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics but also broadens the research field of metaphor. On the other hand, this thesis is beneficial to people’s understanding of Inner Mongolia grassland song lyrics. And through these grassland songs, people can know more about grassland culture. Besides, language leaners can understand the implied meaning of words and cultural habits by metaphor in song lyrics so as to improve the comprehension and discrimination of language.