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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
Metaphor is important in forming human language and cognition, which cannotbe overrated, that is why it has drawn the attention of scholars for more than twothousand years. Metaphor in English is originated from Greek "metaphora", means"carrying across", that is to say, "to proceed from the one to the other". Metaphorcommonly means saying one thing but indicating something else, making some sortof comparison between things that share common features, perhaps even violatingsemantic rules. Metaphor research is classic and new. It is classic, because this topichas been under the probe for more than 2,000 years in the history of linguistics,psychology and philosophy. It is new, because metaphor research has transformedfrom the traditionally rhetoric-oriented research to the recent cognition-orientedresearch.Aristotle is the first person to make the start of systematic metaphor study inhuman history, his argumentation on the definition and function of metaphor had beenthe authoritative metaphor theory for the next two thousand years until the 1930s. InPoetics, Aristotle defined metaphor as “a movement of an alien name either fromgenus to species or from species to genus or from species to species or by analogy”(Aristotle 21.7). Traditionally, metaphor is only regarded as the decoration oflanguage or one rhetoric tool used to gain the effect of comparison in literary work.Since 300 BC all the way through till the 1930s, with Aristotle's metaphor theory asthe beginning, research on metaphor had been focusing on the rhetorical functions ofmetaphor. Since the 1930s to the early 1970s, scholars began to turn to linguistics,logistics and philosophy in the research on metaphor.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Read this line: My life was a war that could not be won.This simple sentence delivers much richer information than we can imagine. Thisline comes from the latest movie Les Miserables. Jean Val jean looked back the timewhen he was repressed by the dictating authority, he couldn’t help sighing for himselfand the poor, and he related his life to a war. According to conceptual metaphortheory, this is a life as war metaphor with war as source domain and life as targetdomain. The features and relations of war are mapped onto life. The opponents of thiswar were Jean Val jean and the dictators in the 19thcentury France. Jean Val jean wasthe oppressed side, so he felt destined to lose the war. Look how much we can learnfrom this seemingly simple sentence, look how his intense hopelessness and anger canbe expressed in one sentence. How do people think about things they can never see ortouch? Language is what distinct human being from animals. It is amazing that we areblessed with language and we can do things with language. From the earliest view ofseeing metaphor as a decorative tool to language to the most recent view of seeingmetaphor as a way of thinking, metaphor plays a more and more important role inhuman being’s conceptualization of the world, or rather I should say that people beginto realize more and more clearly that metaphor plays an important role in our thoughtand cognition. From concentrating on language itself to digging into the depth oflanguage through the surface, language study has changed profoundly; language nowhas become more than just a tool for communication. Beyond t本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。