Cognitive Analysis Of The Orientation Word "QIAN\HOU" From The Perspective Of Embodied Philosophy

Orientation words in modern Chinese are a kind of words,which are used to express spatial direction and position.They are divided into simple orientation words and compound orientation words which have rich usages and can be combined with different morphemes to express various meanings.In recent years,many scholars have studied and analyzed the metaphorical usage of orientation words in modern Chinese from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and few have analyzed the mechanism of conceptual metaphor and the causes behind it from the perspective of embodied philosophy.Embodied philosophy is a philosophical theory published by Lakoff and Johnson,which includes three basic principles:"the embodied mind","unconscious cognition"and "metaphorical thought".Cognitive linguistics emphasizes the embodiment of language,as well as the role of body experience and cognitive processing in the process of language formation,and the subjectivity and subjectivization of language meaning.Under the guidance of embodied philosophy and from the perspective of diachronic development,this dissertation attempts to analyze the causes of the meaning expansion of orientation words in modern Chinese and the conceptual metaphor mechanism behind it.The cognition of space concept is one of the most important and basic cognitive ways of human beings.Conceptual metaphor,based on body experience,is a metaphorical result of cognitive processing on the basis of human common body experience,which has a great cognitive effect.Language is the result of the embodied mind,the metaphorical thought and the unconscious cognition of the cognitive subject.In this paper,the author uses the modern Chinese online corpus to collect the corpus about the orientation "QIAN\HOU " in modern Chinese.After research and analysis,the author concludes that the usage of orientation word "QIAN\HOU" can be divided into two categories:space domain and non-space domain;space domain includes embodying matters or people,embodying sequence,embodying mation;non-space domain includes time domain,state domain and social relation domain.The author subdivides the time domain and finds that "QIAN" can construe the concept of "past","future" and "present";"HOU" can construe the concept of "past"and "future";The author subdivides the state domain and finds that "QIAN" can embody the concept of "positiveness,openness and courage";"HOU" can embody the concept of "negativeness,secret and timidity";the author subdivides the social relation domain and finds that "QIAN\HOU" can also identify "social hierarchy and interpersonal relation".In modern Chinese,the image schema of spatial domain is mapped to the image schema of non-spatial domain by conceptual metaphor.This kind of conceptual metaphor is not random,but based on the body experience of subject-object interaction and cognitive processing.It is the result of human interaction with the surrounding world.Language is not a reflection of the objective world,but a product of the interaction between the body and the objective world.The understanding of language meaning is based on reality.Language is produced through cognitive processing.Language meaning is the result of body interaction and unconscious cognitive processing,and follows the cognitive procedure of"reality-cognition-language".Language research is born out of philosophy research,and language issues are philosophy issues in the final analysis.The analysis of conceptual metaphor from the perspective of embodied philosophy is another perspective of language research.Cognitive linguistics gives a convincing explanation of many language phenomena because cognitive linguistics finds the breakthrough of philosophy.In addition,the analysis of the causes behind the language phenomenon from the perspective of embodied philosophy can provide enlightenment and help for TCFL.