And nowadays, the widespread application of phonetic metaphor in English makes news, advertisements, and idioms more distinct and vivid. For better understanding of implied intentions or culture difference in English phonetic metaphor, this thesis will be based on Lakoff and other scholars’ definitions of metaphor and Langacker’s explanation of symbolic unit as well as the previous studies on phonetic metaphor, aiming to offer a more comprehensive explanations and applications phonetic metaphor news, advertisements, and idioms and net-speaks. Thus we will understand the English more profoundly and widely without ignorance of phonetic metaphor. 

2. Literature Review

2.1 Metaphor

    2.1.1 An overview of metaphor

    Metaphor is a figure of speech, in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a conformity. With the blossom of cognitive linguistics, metaphorical meaning has been the spotlight for the cognitive scholars, and metaphor is deemed as a cognitive tool, which can be employed to glass the world and perceive the world by our life experience, a rhetorical device, as well.

   The concept of metaphor can be ascended back to Aristotle school. At that time, the study of metaphor was only confined to the rhetoric and poetry. And metaphor, as a rhetorical device or language tool, conveyed the identical meanings. In Poetics (335 BC), ‘‘metaphor is the application of a strange term either transferred from the genus and applied to the species or from the species and applied to the genus, or from one species to another or else by analogy’’, defined by Aristotle (Aristotle, Poetics: 1457b.)

   Since the late 1970s, there has been a furor in the research of metaphor in the west, and it also floods into China. In the wake of novel theories of metaphor and new viewpoints on metaphor discussed, metaphor has been researched on the level of sentence and regarded as a semantic phenomenon which brings forth new meanings. Many scholars at home and abroad contribute to this study---metaphor. In western countries, there are Lakoff and Johnson (1980,1999), Lakoff and Turner (1989), Lakoff (1992), etc, also in China, there are Shu Dingfang (1996a,1996b,2000), Hu Zhuanglin (2004), Wang Yin (2001,2002,2005,2007), Lan Chun (2003,2005), Zhang Pei(2004), Sheng Jiaxuan (1999,2004) Li Hong (2005), Su Lichang (2007), etc.. Accordingly, it seems that there is a ‘‘Metaphormania’’ (Wang Yan 2007:402) from poles to poles all these years.

   Cognitive linguists assert that it is the basic way of cognition for metaphor, and it has penetrated in all walks of life: not only in the language but also in the actions and thought (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980:3). What’s more, Lakoff and Johnson (1989) pointed out the substance of metaphor is to perceive or experience a thing via another means. From cognitive tool to rhetorical device, metaphor has witnessed numerous changes. Variety of scholars have been trying to provide metaphor an integral classification and the following is based on the endeavors of these scholars.