A Semantic Study of Chinese Metaphors Derived from Visual Perception
| Autor: | Sampson Chao-tai Yen, 顏兆泰 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2000 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 88 This thesis focuses on a semantic study of Chinese metaphors that are related to visual perception. In this study, visual perception metaphors are defined as the idiomatic expressions containing Chinese words denoting the eye, such as yan眼 and mu目 “eye”. In a extended case, my definition of visual perception expressions has broadened itself to include function of vision “to see” such as kan看 “watch”, guan觀 “watch”, shi 視 “look at”, and also the lack of this function like mang 盲 and xia 瞎 “blind”. It is a general assumption in many semantic approaches that language is a mental faculty and this faculty is closely tied together with the function of human perception and cognition. The outstanding linguists, Lakoff and Johnson, both hold that the semantic study is necessarily a part of the whole exploration of human cognition (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). They suggest that metaphor is a main mechanism through which human beings comprehend abstract concepts. This thesis is mainly based on their theoretical foundation and adopts a cognitive semantic approach to conduct a study on the Chinese metaphors derived from visual perception. As a result of research about these Chinese metaphors, the two main findings of Lakoff and Johnson are again confirmed by the Chinese examples, which I have raised in this research project. First, there is a conceptual structure underlying these Chinese visual perception metaphors. Second, human physical experience forms an important basis for the metaphorical extension from the purely physical body parts to add an abstract meaning. For example, the functions of eye or ear are to provide human beings with a primary source of objective data about the world. Later on this primary data is extended into intellectual domain. Since human beings in their language development use engage often in a metaphorical mapping from sensory domains (such as concrete physical movements, etc.) to another domain of abstract mental state, my study has proved that the way of human cognition proceeds from concrete to abstract. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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