A Study On Time Metaphor In Song Ci

As early as more than 2000 years ago,Aristotle discussed metaphor systematically in his poetics.He pointed out that metaphor is a linguistic decoration,and its essence is a rhetorical phenomenon.In the 1980 s,American linguist Lakoff and Johnson co-authored the book Metaphors We Live By.The publication of the book marks the birth of the theory of conceptual metaphor.They point out that metaphor is ubiquitous in language and thinking.It is not only a rhetorical phenomenon,but also a cognitive style.It is an important cognitive tool for human beings to recognize abstract concepts.The theory of conceptual metaphor provides a new perspective for humans beings to explore time from the perspective of language.Under the influence of cognitive linguistics abroad,the study of time metaphor in China has also achieved fruitful results.However,most of the studies are focused on modern Chinese corpus,and there is relatively research on time metaphor in classical poetry.The expression of “time” is very common in Chinese classical poetry,it has a very rich connotation and performance.The people often express the abstract concept of time through metaphorical language,especially the expressions about time in song ci can be found everywhere.Therefore,based on the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics,this paper attempts to make a detailed study of time metaphor in song ci.This paper is divided into five chapters:The first chapter is the introduction,which elaborates the background and significance of time metaphor,summarizes the current situation and existing problems of research at our country and abroad,and explains the source of corpus and research methods of this paper.The second chapter is a brief introduction to the theory of metaphor.The first part is the definition,classification and working mechanism of metaphor.The second part is related concepts of time metaphor and poetry.The third chapter is the main body of this paper,which makes a detailed analysis of time metaphor in Song Ci from three aspects: working mechanism,classification and semantic features.Firstly,the paper analyzes the working mechanism of time metaphor in Song Ci from three aspects: semantic conflict,mapping and similarity.Secondly,according to Lakoff'sclassification of metaphors,the time metaphors in Song Ci can be divided into three categories: ontological metaphor(entity metaphor,container metaphor and personification metaphor),location metaphor(movement of time,measurement of time),structural metaphor("time is money","time is flower","time is flowing","time is arrow","time is shuttle","time is electric").At the same time,based on the similarity between the source domain and the target domain,the cognitive mechanism of the formation of each sub-category of metaphors is analyzed in detail.Finally,after classifying a large number of corpus in Song Ci,five semantic characteristics of time metaphor in Song Ci are summarized: contradiction,locality,diversity,temporary and systematicness.The fourth chapter is the cognitive analysis of the time metaphor in Song Ci.It explores and summarizes the causes of the formation of the time metaphor in Song Ci from two aspects of cognitive psychological factors and national factors.The fifth chapter is the conclusion,that is to say,this paper attempts to use the Western metaphor theory to analyze the time metaphor in Song Ci,to explore the metaphorical thinking and time view of the ancients,and to provide cross-linguistic and cross-cultural evidence for the metaphor theory.It also provides a new perspective for the appreciation and writing of Chinese classical poetry.