A Study Of Discourse Coherent Function Of Conceptual Metaphors In The Garlic Ballads

Since its debut in 1988,Mo Yan's novel — The Garlic Ballads has been translated into multiple languages and has received wide attention from scholars both at home and abroad.Up to the present moment,research on this novel and its translation versions has been done from diverse perspectives,such as narrative respect,rewriting,translation and so forth.However,only a few scholars have ever attended to it from a cognitive perspective,let alone the conceptual metaphor respect.According to conceptual metaphor theory,metaphor is not only a matter of language,but also a matter of cognitive thinking for human beings.The essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another.Conceptual metaphor is characterized by systematicity,metaphorical entailment and coherence,making a discourse based on one or complex metaphor coherent.On the basis of conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson,the present thesis attempts to take The Garlic Ballads as the research object,aiming at analyzing the major conceptual metaphors in the novel and discussing how these metaphors help realize the novel's coherence in the light of its structure organization and theme expression.The major contributions of this thesis can be represented as follows:1.According to the different categories of the source domain,there are two major types of conceptual metaphors in this novel,namely,GARLIC FARMERS ARE GARLIC PEDICELS and HUMAN IS ANIMAL metaphor.There are also a few other conceptual metaphors in the novel,including CORN IS HUMAN,GARLIC FARMERS ARE SUNFLOWERS,HUMAN IS INDUSTRIAL PRODUCT and so forth.2.On the basis of single metaphor's systematicity and coherence,and complex metaphors' metaphorical entailments,these conceptual metaphors,such as GARLIC FARMERS ARE GARLIC PEDICELS,HUMAN IS ANIMAL and so on,make language expressions coherent so as to realize local structural coherence in the novel.On the other hand,these conceptual metaphors jointly reflect the novel's theme through metaphorical entailments,that is,the garlic framers' lower status and helplessness at that time,so as to achieve the overall coherence of the novel.In summary,the present research on coherent function of conceptual metaphors in The Garlic Ballads will be conducive to readers' understanding of the literary works by Mo Yan,and at the same time be available to provide some reference to the creation of other literary works.