商务英语35metaphor商务英语.pdf

Metaphor • Theories: Cognitive theory of • Comparison metaphor Classification: • Substitution Ontological metaphor • Mapping Structural metaphor • Interaction Orientational metaphor • Integration 2 Ontological metaphor • It means that human experiences with physical objects provide basis for ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances. By ontological metaphors we give bounded surfaces to less clearly discrete entities. • E.g. INFLATION IS AN ENTITY • Inflation is lowering our standard of living. • Inflation is backing us into a corner. Structure metaphor • Structure metaphor plays the most important role because it allows us to go beyond orientation and referring and gives us the possibility to structure one concept according to another. • E.g. ARGUMENT IS WAR • His criticism were right on target. • He attacked every weak point in my argument. • I demolished his argument. Orientational metaphor • It gives a concept a spatial orientation. They are characterized not so much by structuring one concept in terms of another, but by a co-occurrence in our experience. The orientational metaphors are grounded in an experiential basis, which link together the two parts of the metaphor. Orientational metaphor • E.g. HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOW • I’m feeling up. • My spirits rose. • I’m feeling down. • I fell into a depression. • My spirits sank. Metonymy • Metonymy, in the cognitive literature, is defined as a cognitive process in which the vehicle provides mental access to the target within th