A Corpus-based Study Of Metaphorical Extensions Of OUT In English And WAI In Chinese

Studies on metaphor originate from Aristotle,who takes metaphor as a rhetorical device.This perspective domains metaphor study for centuries until the publication of Metaphors We Live By,which marks the cognitive turn in metaphor study.This book formulates the Conceptual Metaphor Theory,which classifies metaphors into three types:orientational metaphor,ontological metaphor,and structural metaphor.This study adopts the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and image schema as the theoretical framework to analyze metaphorical extensions of OUT in English and WAI in Chinese.With the development of corpus linguistics,the corpus approach is gradually adopted by cognitive linguists in the study of metaphor.Different from traditional introspection approach,corpus approach provides abundant authentic data,which improves the objectivity and systematicity of the research.As a bottom-up method,it is in accordance with the use-based language view.Recently,corpus approach to metaphor is on the rise.This study,therefore,investigates metaphorical extensions of OUT and WAI based on corpora evidence.The corpus of this study is retrieved from Chinese Web 2011 and English Web 2013,two sub-corpora from Sketch Engine.500 samples of out and wai are randomly selected.Through the quantitative and qualitative analysis,this study figures out that:(1)The metaphorical meaning of both OUT and WAI are used predominantly.There are six target domains to which OUT maps the CONTAINER schema,including STATE,TIME,ENTITY,DEGREE,RANGE,and LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP.WAI maps its CONTAINER schema to five target domains,namely,TIME,ENTITY,DEGREE,RANGE,and SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP.(2)OUT and WAI share four common target domains,involving TIME,ENTITY,DEGREE,and RANGE.(3)Differences of OUT and WAI consist in four parts:STATE as a target domain of OUT,LOGICAL RELATIONSHIP as a target domain of OUT,SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP as a target domain of WAI,and RANGE as a target domain of OUT and WAI.(4)The reasons for the similarities and differences of OUT and WAI might be rooted in physical experiences,historical diplomacy,value of social culture,and word class.This study explores the metaphorical extensions of OUT and WAI based on corpora evidence.It presents an exploration of corpus-based study on spatial metaphor,and provides empirical evidences for the cognitive view of metaphor from Lakoff.