Metaphorical Analysis Under The Theory Of Spatial Frames Of Reference

The studies on how metaphor is related to spatial cognition at home and abroad mainly focus on spatial metaphor,and the notion“spatial metaphor”belongs to conceptual metaphor system.So those studies can be regarded as the extending or developing of the conceptual metaphor theory.However,the study of space can be deepen by means of the theory of spatial frames of reference.Stephen C.Levinson put forward the theory of spatial frames of reference in his book Space in Language and Cognition:Explorations in Cognitive Diversity.He established three spatial frames of reference,namely,intrinsic frame of reference,relative frame of reference and absolute frame of reference,to analyze spatial relationship.This thesis attempts to use Levinson's theory to analyze the metaphors in Emily Dickinson's poems and to reveal the characteristics of the metaphors in those poems.Emily Dickinson(1830-1886),the outstanding and legendary poet of America in 19~thh century,is famed as one of the pioneers of modernism poems.During her more than thirty years writing career,most of her total 1775 poems mainly center on the themes such as“life”,“nature”,“philosophieren”,“heaven”,“religion”,“death”,“love”,etc..The present study adopts a combination of both qualitative and quantitative method.With some key words corresponding to each theme as the standard for classification,the study imports Dickinson's 1775 poems from World Poetry Database into SQL(Structured Query Language)and concludes that there are 94 poems centering on the four themes,“nature”,“love”,“death”and“heaven”in the total 133 poems of the book Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson,with the proportion of 70.6%and there are 1264 poems centering on the four themes in her total 1775 poems,with the proportion of 71.2%.So the statistics shows that the four themes in Dickinson's poems are very important and worthy of study.The thesis selects the representative poems centering on the four themes respectively and employs Levinson's theory of spatial frames of reference to analyze the spatial relations in the image combinations of those poems,thus revealing the metaphorical meanings produced by the image combinations.The result of the study shows that Emily Dickinson's poems have special characteristics,that is,uncertain signified meanings are produced by constructing the multi-dimensional relationship between one thing and other things around it,and a unique metaphor effect is created by breaking the conventional relationship between the literal meaning and metaphorical meaning of one thing.Moreover,Levinson's theory of Spatial Frames of Reference has a special function in revealing the multidimensional relationship between things and the perspective of perceiving things.