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2.1 Definitions of Related Items
Etymologically，the Greek word “metaphor”, meaning ‘across’, consists of ‘meta’, and‘phor’ or ‘phercin’, meaning ‘to carry’, so metaphor refers to a kind of movement, ‘carryingover’ or ‘transferring’. There must be two points for a ‘transfer’ to be carried out, which arethe point of departure and the point of the destination．Therefore，a metaphor makes apresupposition at least two things．The features of one thing are ‘transferred’ to the other. Andthese two things are called ‘tenor’ and vehicle’ respectively by Richards (Quoted by Ortony,1993).Aristotle is generally acknowledged to be the first scholar making a systematic study onmetaphors．And according to Aristotle，metaphor is the transference of a name to somethingelse which it does not belong to. Besides, he persists metaphor involves a replacement ofwords, yet his definition does not give any precise principles as to the interpretation ofmetaphoric working. In Aristotle’s Poetics, he defined metaphor like this:Metaphor can be the transference of a name from the object to which has a naturalapplication and this transference will occur from genus to species or species to genus or fromspecies to species or by analogy, for example, “This ship of mine stands there.” For lying atanchor is a species of standing. The following is an example of transference from species togenus, “Odysseus has truly accomplished a myriad of noble deeds.”
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2.2 Related Theories of Metaphor
It is generally believed that researches on metaphor start with Aristotle, who definesmetaphor as “a transfer of names belonging to elsewhere”. Besides, he gives a systematicdescription on metaphor in his work “Rhetoric and Poetics”, in which, Aristotle (1954) claimsthat metaphor is the application of an unfamiliar name by transference either from genus tospecies or from species to genus or from species to species，or by analogy. He sees metaphoras the transference from one object to another, involving at least two words and things．Basedon the principle of analogy, Aristotle thinks of metaphor as comparisons．That’s why histheory of metaphor is named as the ‘‘comparison theory of metaphor’’.Aristotle has always been a key figure in the use of language in poetry and prose in thewestern literature. Furthermore, in Rhetoric Aristotle states that the best metaphors are thosethat can achieve the effect of presenting things before the eyes of the audience in a vivid. Healso argues that this effect is produced by words which refer to things in action. Even thoughhis study and theory have made a great contribution to the following subsequent works onmetaphor, there are still some limits to his theory．First of all, metaphor is just treated withinthe frame of ‘‘words”, especially nouns; secondly, metaphor just refers to “all ornamentaldevice” in literary languages and he suggests that metaphor should be limited to poetry;finally, he believes that metaphoric competence only belongs to genius and can not be taught.Apart from Aristotle’s comparison theory of metaphor, there are two other leadingtheories that belong to the traditional school. They are substitution theory and interactiontheory.
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