A Cognitive Approach to the Metonymy and Metaphor-Based Study of “Black” in English

Hui Fan,Yonghong Liao,Yougen Lou

doi:10.4236/ce.2017.810117

Abstract

According to the contemporary theories, metonymy and metaphor are two major types of word meaning extension, which reveal how people perceive unfamiliar, abstract concepts via familiar, concrete one on the basis of bodily experience. Through the data of “black” from Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (6th Edition), under the theories in cognitive linguistics, namely, the prototype theory, conceptual metaphor theory, metonymy theory, this paper takes the basic color term “black” in English as an example to analyze the cognitive semantic structure and summarizes the cause of it. This paper aims to strengthen the accuracy of words meaning and translation as well as the cross-cultural awareness and capacity.

Highlights

Traditional studies usually regard metonymy and metaphor as rhetoric devices, a figure of speech since Aristotle Period (384-322 BC) while in the book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) revolutionized the concepts of metonymy and metaphor. They found that metonymy and metaphor are not merely rhetoric devices that people have always believed them to be
It is well known that black is one kind of color, which is familiar to our human beings
By analyzing the linguistic data collected from dictionaries, newspapers, the Internet, and our casual daily conversations, we divide the meanings of the color term “black” into two main types: the prototypical meaning and the prototypebased extended meanings

Summary

Introduction

Traditional studies usually regard metonymy and metaphor as rhetoric devices, a figure of speech since Aristotle Period (384-322 BC) while in the book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) revolutionized the concepts of metonymy and metaphor They found that metonymy and metaphor are not merely rhetoric devices that people have always believed them to be. Instead, they function in people’s conceptual system and play a significant role in shaping how people think and behave. They function in people’s conceptual system and play a significant role in shaping how people think and behave They are the means by which it is possible to ground our conceptual systems experimentally, and to reason in a constrained but creative fashion

Metonymies and Metaphors on “Black”

Metonymies on “Black”

Metaphors on “Black”

Conclusion