| Metaphor has long been regarded as a linguistic phenomenon and a rhetorical device,until Lakoff and Johnson introduced the theory of conceptual metaphor in the1980 s,which formally introduced the study of metaphor into the field of cognitive linguistics.In recent years,a new trend has also emerged in the field of ethnolinguistics,with more and more scholars adopting cognitive theory in their textual interpretations.For example,Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs from China contains more than 2,000 proverbs,which are related to matters,cultivation,family,life,communication,production,nature,vernacular,current affairs and culture and education,etc.On the other hand,in recent years,the study of conceptual metaphors has gradually intersected with other disciplines,providing a new perspective for the study of Zhuang proverbs.This paper systematically compile,analyze,and study the corpus of Zhuang animal proverbs based on the conceptual metaphor theory and related literature,with the aim of gaining a deep understanding of the unique customs and cultural characteristics of the Zhuang people.This paper will focus on the following three questions: 1.what are the main conceptual metaphors of animal proverbs in Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs from China? 2.what are the source and target domains of these conceptual metaphors? 3.how are these conceptual metaphors generated and what aspects of Zhuang culture are reflected in them? The paper identifies metaphorical expressions from Chinese Zhuang animal proverbs and analyzes them mainly in terms of structural metaphors,orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors.It was found that the metaphorical categories of the source domain of animal proverbs in the Two Thousand Zhuang Proverbs from China mainly take animal life domain as the source domain,in addition to fictional animals as the source domain and animal comparison as the source domain;while the target domain takes human behavior as the target domain,harvest as the target domain,power as the target domain and differences between species as the target domain.The metaphorical categories of the source and target domains reflect the agreement between human and animal in terms of behavior,emotion,and communication,revealing the intrinsic connection between Zhuang people and animals.The study also combined metaphorical analysis to discover the relationship between Zhuang animal proverbs and Zhuang culture,which reflected Zhuang communicative ritual culture,Zhuang festival folklore,and Zhuang ethnic personality.This study is divided into six chapters: Chapter 1 clarifies the background,purpose and significance of this paper,and introduces the sources of the corpus and research methods of this paper;Chapter 2 introduces the current status of Zhuang proverbs and conceptual metaphors research.The study of Zhuang proverbs includes the concept of Zhuang proverbs and related definitions,the history of proverbs research,and related studies of Zhuang proverbs;Chapter 3 introduces the theoretical framework of this paper,on the one hand introducing the origin and essence,working mechanism,and classification of conceptual metaphor theory.It introduces the conceptual metaphor categories of Zhuang animal proverbs,including the source domain types and target domain types in Zhuang animal proverbs conceptual metaphors;Chapter 4 explores the structural metaphors,orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors in Zhuang proverbs with conceptual metaphor theory;Chapter5 analyzes the conceptual metaphors of Zhuang animal proverbs and Zhuang culture from three aspects: Zhuang communicative ritual culture,Zhuang folk customs and Zhuang ethnic identity,and studies the meaning construction of Zhuang animal proverbs;Chapter 6 is the conclusion,which summarizes the article’s innovations,findings and shortcomings,and presents prospects for future research. |
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