Metaphors In Chinese Network Catchphrases: A Context Perspective

As a special linguistic phenomenon, network catchphrases, the reflection of one era, are closely linked to the life style as well as the thinking mode of modern people. In addition, they are hot topics of research due to their own features such as adhering to the economy principle, conveying meanings vividly and exactly, and pursuing creative and metaphorical meanings. The reason why they can get their popularity and launch their position into the modern society has a close relationship with the creative metaphors entailed in them. Metaphor, as one kind of cognitive styles, has a deep impact on their spreading and meaning construction.The aim of this thesis is to analyze metaphors in network catchphrases and it mainly selects Chinese network catchphrases during 2005-2014 as the linguistic evidence to support the study. In different contexts, meanings conveyed by one expression are different, so are the metaphors that construct meanings. Therefore, this paper chooses the classification of context put forward by Kovecses(2015) as the theoretical framework to explore how situational context, discourse context, bodily context and conceptual-cognitive context influence the creation and comprehension of metaphors in network catchphrases.This thesis mainly focuses on two research questions:(1) What are contextual factors that influence the creation and interpretation of metaphors in network catchphrases?(2) How do the contextual factors influence workings of metaphors in network catchphrases? Considering these two questions, the author firstly selects some network catchphrases containing metaphors from the collected data, to analyze the contexts in which they occur. Then, the author conducts a metaphorical analysis of these network catchphrases and explores why these metaphors are created and how they are created.This paper mainly adopts the method of qualitative analysis, selecting some typical network catchphrases to make a metaphorical analysis from a contextual perspective. Through such an analysis, this study finds:(1) situational context, discourse context, bodily context and conceptual-cognitive context all have impacts on the creation and comprehension of metaphors in network catchphrases;(2) metaphors are not only the conventionalized cognition preexisting in people's mind but also the results of many contextual factors;(3) in different contexts, different new metaphors can be created for various purposes by virtue of selecting different source domains or target domains. This study can help us have a further recognition of the close relationship between context and metaphor as well as a deeper understanding of the application of network catchphrases in order to decrease the abuse of language. By analyzing metaphors in network catchphrases from the perspective of context, this study expects more emphasis on context when analyzing metaphor so as to broaden the horizon of metaphorical research.