美国总统演讲的隐喻分析从亚里士多德修辞学角度-外国语言学与应用语言学专业毕业论文.docxVIP

ii ii Abstract Metaphor, dating from ancient Greece, when Aristotle proposed it as a mere rhetorical tool to 1980s, Lankoff and Johnson published Metaphors We Live By (1980), marked the rise of cognitive function of metaphor. Nowadays, metaphor has become a common linguistic phenomenon. People are more and more aware of the important role of metaphor in human social activity and cognitive process. Metaphor is becoming an indispensable cognitive tool for human beings. As a means of knowing the world, metaphor can effectively reveal people’s thoughts and ideas. Owing to its nature of persuasiveness and vividness, it is widely used in some persuasion discourses, especially in political speeches. It will help speakers to convey their potential ideology effectively. Aristotle proposed three appeals in his classical rhetorical theory: logos, pathos and ethos. With these three appeals, the speaker can persuade the public better, and thus get more effective support. Thus it can be seen that the purpose of using metaphor in speeches are consistent with the three appeals. Since the metaphor came into being, the majority of scholars started researching it from rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy, cognitive science and interdisciplinary. However, it is rarely mentioned before that the studying of linking metaphor with three appeals and finding out how metaphor reflects Aristotle’s three appeals. Thus this thesis will explore the functions and effects of metaphor in American presidential speeches from Aristotlean rhetoric perspective. The research adopts quality analysis method, selects several representative American presidential speeches discourses as corpus, and focuses on the following two questions: firstly, how is metaphor used in American presidential speeches? Secondly, what are the purpose and function of metaphor in American presidential speeches? Through solving these questions, the study can help us understand the ideological functions of metaphors in America