2. Literature Review

2.1Aristotle’s comparison view

Aristotle plays an important role in the field of classic theory of metaphor. In The Poetics, he defines that “metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else” (qtd. in Kjargaard, 1986:11). This is a traditional definition which emphasizes the transference of meaning. Its mechanism is “the application of an alien name by transference from genus to species, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion” (qtd. in Mahon, 2001:71). As to the function of metaphor, he believes “metaphor can raise the diction above the level of the commonplace” (qtd. in Hawkes, 1980:8).  He thinks metaphor is a kind of rhetoric and metaphor could just be used in literary works. Aristotle’s opinion is later developed into the comparison theory.源[自*751^`论\文"网·www.751com.cn/

2.2 Lakoff & Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory

In the process of metaphor’s development, there is a theory of metaphor called conceptual metaphor theory. According to the famous cognitive linguists Lakoff& Johnson, “we have found that metaphor allows us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another” (Lakoff& Johnson, 1980:117). They call the domain with the knowledge we have learnt “the source domain” and the domain with the knowledge we will learn “the target domain”. Most source domain knowledge comes from our daily life and they are our experience. The progress from the source domain to the target domain is called mapping. The criterion of mapping is the metaphor and cultural coherence.

Lakoff and his colleague study the metaphor theory and make progress. They think the working mechanism is the transference of meaning between the source domain and the target domain. For example, in the concept metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, the source domain is the journey which is the thing we are familiar with, and the target domain is life which is the abstract concept we want to learn.  We may explain that the destination of the journey is thought as the aim in one’s life; the barriers in the journey are equal to the difficulties in his or her life.

The conceptual metaphors consist of three types according to the types of source domains. 

Structural metaphors

In structural metaphors, “one concept is structured in terms of another in a metaphorical way” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980: 14). It means we can learn the unfamiliar and abstract concept from the familiar concept. For example, we all know the concept ARGUMENT, so we can firstly study the following conceptual metaphor with some sentences on an argument.

ARGUMENT IS WAR

He attacked every weak point in my argument.

His criticisms were right on target.

If you use that strategy, he will wipe you out.

We can find we always use the concept of war when we argue. In fact, there is really no war but some features of a war in the structure of an argument, as reflected in words like defense, attack, strategies, etc. In western culture, the situation of argument is really like a war. Two groups make thorough strategies in order to achieve the victory of the argument. In this situation, we apply one concept of the structure of war to the structure of an argument.