摘要
Since Lakoff and Johnson proposed conceptual metaphors in 1980,an increasing number of metaphor studies have occurred in different disciplines,however,few of them are found in literary works from a corpus perspective.On this account,the study aims at revealing how meanings are constructed through conceptual metaphors in a novel.We selected the text version of A House Divided as the research data,which is one of the most important representative works of American writer Pearl S.Buck,the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.With the help of Word Smith Tools 6.0 to retrieve them,we find that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in it and,among them,ontological metaphors occur most,followed by structural metaphors and orientation metaphors which occur least.Pearl S.Buck’s cognitive contexts,as well as the Chinese social context in the 1930 s,may the key factors of her choice of metaphors in the writing.
Since Lakoff and Johnson proposed conceptual metaphors in 1980, an increasing number of metaphor studies have occurred in different disciplines, however, few of them are found in literary works from a corpus perspective. On this account, the study aims at revealing how meanings are constructed through conceptual metaphors in a novel. We selected the text version of A House Divided as the research data, which is one of the most important representative works of American writer Pearl S. Buck, the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. With the help of Word Smith Tools 6.0 to retrieve them, we find that conceptual metaphors are pervasive in it and, among them, ontological metaphors occur most, followed by structural metaphors and orientation metaphors which occur least. Pearl S. Buck’s cognitive contexts, as well as the Chinese social context in the 1930 s, may the key factors of her choice of metaphors in the writing.
基金
one of the research results of the project funded by the Ministry of Education of China(grant no.17YJA740072).
