A Study On The Discourse Functions Of Conceptual Metaphor In Spoken Discourse

Conceptual metaphor is not only a rhetorical device but also a way of thinking. Conceptual metaphor is commonly used in literary works, no matter in spoken discourses or written discourses. Conceptual metaphor is closely related to our life. Where there are languages, there will be conceptual metaphor. Scholars have studied conceptual metaphor in detail in many aspects such as vocabulary, sentence structure, rhetoric etc. However, there is very few researches focusing on the aspect of discourse. As a matter of fact, the application of conceptual metaphor can make the discourse more colorful, the description more vivid, the ideas easier to pass on, the pre-part and the post-part more coherent and the readers or audiences easier to understand. However, compared with written discourse, the studies on the discourse functions of conceptual metaphor in spoken discourse are not deep enough. This thesis takes the conceptual metaphors in 2 Broke Girls as examples because there are so many conceptual metaphors in this drama, and the dialogues in the drama are in popular language and they are related to our life closely. For the reasons mentioned above,2 Broke Girls is suitable to be the study material in this thesis. This TV drama is relatively new and there are few studies on the language features in it, which gives room for this study. Therefore, this thesis mainly applies conceptual metaphor theory and coherence theory in discourse studies together as the basis and reference, analyzes the samples chosen from 2 Broke Girls, and discusses the spoken discourse functions of conceptual metaphor, which refers to conceptual metaphor’s function on coherence of spoken discourse.First of all, the coherence of conceptual metaphor is introduced in detail and classified as the coherence between the metaphorical expressions in one conceptual metaphor and coherence between different conceptual metaphors. Then this thesis organizes the previous studies on conceptual metaphor and discourse analysis and 2 Broke Girls. Then this thesis points out the places for further perfection. The studies on conceptual metaphor and discourse analysis rarely come down to spoken discourse and the studies on 2 Broke Girls are mostly related to the humorous elements and subtitle translation. The last step is to classify and analyze the samples according to the way of classification above to prove the ideas in this thesis.In this thesis, three research questions are raised:1) What are the discourse functions of conceptual metaphors in spoken discourse?2) Why does conceptual metaphor have these discourse functions in spoken discourse?3) How does conceptual metaphor in 2 Broke Girls achieve its functions? Through a series of researches and explorations, there are three main findings of this thesis:1) Conceptual metaphor is found abundantly in spoken discourse and there are various kinds of conceptual metaphor in spoken discourse. The main function of conceptual metaphor is to make the spoken discourse coherent.2) Conceptual metaphor possesses the coherent function in a spoken discourse because conceptual metaphor’s features:systematicity and coherence.3) Conceptual metaphor shows the function of coherence through the connection between different conceptual metaphors in the same discourse and between the metaphorical expressions in one conceptual metaphor.The findings can replenish the studies concerning conceptual metaphor and discourse analysis, and also raise something new for cross-cultural communication.