Chapter4-10

Tony带水

Reader: 英语2302班阳佳玲
Reading Time: 5.9-5.11
Reading Task: Chapter4-10

Summary of the Content: Orientational metaphor organizes the conceptual system through spatial directions (such as up and down, front and back, etc.). It is based on physical experience and culture, and has both internal and external systematicity. The most fundamental values in the culture are closely related to the metaphorical structure. Ontological metaphor regards events, activities, emotions, etc. as entities or substances, facilitating people's disposal of experiences. Personification is an ontological metaphor that further designates physical objects as characters, which can help people understand the experiences of non-human entities from the perspectives of human. Metonymy is a phenomenon where one entity refers to another related entity. Different from metaphor, it mainly has the function of reference and can provide understanding.

Evaluation: The authors expand metaphor from a simple linguistic rhetorical device to the core level of thinking and culture. Through a rich variety of examples, it reveals the ubiquitous phenomenon of metaphor in daily life, making me realize once again that our thinking and actions are largely dominated by metaphor. During the elaboration, the authors employ a large number of examples from various fields, ranging from daily conversations to academic discussions, from cultural values to language structures, covering an extremely wide range. Although the book explores relatively abstract philosophical and linguistic topics, the authors ingeniously use common examples in life to transform complex theoretical knowledge into easily understandable expressions. The transitions between each chapter are natural and progressive layer by layer.

Reflection: Conflicts may exist among different values and metaphors, which depend on subcultures and individual value orientations. Not all cultures give the same priority to the upper and lower directions. The orientation of concepts and important directions may vary in different cultures. For instance, some cultures place more emphasis on balance or centrality. Metaphor is not only reflected in language, but also influences the way people think and understand related concepts, and it is an important part of People's Daily thinking and language expression.