Abstract: Linguists, psychologists and philosophers have the common concern about the nature of metaphor. They pay much attention to this issue and explore it. Especially since twentieth century, metaphor has become a multidimensional study on more subjects. They focus their attention and efforts on metaphor itself. We need to make sustained efforts to reveal its essence. Linguists’ research is based on the basic principles of “ reality-cognitive-language” from the cognitive perspective. This paper attempts to employ the recent researches on metaphor, especially the cognitive theory, to explore the pragmatic functions of metaphor from a totally new perspective compared with the traditional rhetorical approach. This paper is composed of six parts. The first part is the introduction and background and research signification of metaphor. The second part introduces some theories. The third part summarizes the concept, classification and function of metaphor. The fourth part analyzes the knowledge of cognitive and the pragmatic function of metaphor from the cognitive perspective. The fifth part lists some points for attention in use. The sixth part is the conclusion. The study of metaphor is very helpful for us to learn different languages and culture. We can acquire a lot of new information from the study of metaphor. |
