Animal Idioms＇ Teaching in Cognitive Perspective——from the Contrastive Analysis on Chinese ＂Hu＂ Idioms and English ＂Lion＂ Idioms

In the actual idioms teaching, most students feel that idioms are difficult to comprehend, memorize and make actual application just because the overall meanings of idioms are unpredictable. Since cognitive linguistics is based on embodiment, it can change the abstract things into comparatively concrete things, which provides a shortest way to grasp these idioms. Actually, most idioms are based on conceptual metaphor and metonymy composed of conceptual mappings between the source domain and the target one. Therefore, this paper is trying to probe into the role of cognitive principles in idioms teaching, especially animal idioms from the contrastive analysis on Chinese ＂hu＂ idioms and English ＂lion＂ idioms.

A Cognitive Study on the Phenomenon of Metonymy in Cantonese

Different from those in Mandarin Chinese,some references in Cantonese adopt metonymy.From the perspective of cognition,this paper takes the conceptual metonymy as the theoretical framework to analyze the typical metonymic references in Cantonese,so as to illustrate the penetration of metonymic mapping in various languages employed by people.

Li-Young Lee＇s ＂I＂ Poetry： In Quest for His Self as a Diaspora

As one of the representative contemporary Asian American poets, Li-Young Lee in his two poetry collections entitled Rose and The Cify in Which 1Love You, recuperates his fragmented family history of immigration, and reconstructs a dynamic relationship with remembrance of the past that writes about him and defines his sense of self. This paper from the multicultural perspective argues that understanding the past through understanding his godlike father, Lee not only negotiates the formation of his subjectivity and identity, but also establishes a spiritual origin and belonging not merely with his ethnic communities but with all the immigrants as well. The paper finds that the strategy he employs in his articulation of his self is marked by his excellent execution of poetic epiphany, and metonymic cannibalism.

A Study of L2 Learner’s Knowledge of Metonymic Sense of“Hand”

Based on a learner corpus Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC)and a native speaker corpus Freiburg Brown Corpus of American English(FROWN),this research investigates the differences between Chinese learners of English and English native speakers in their knowledge of the metonymic senses of human body word“hand”.Two research questions are raised:(1)What are the features that distinguish Chinese English learners from English native speakers?(2)What are the rules in learners’learning of English metonymic senses?In order to answer these two questions,this paper has investigated the frequencies of the identified senses in two corpora of FROWN and CLEC,and the sequence of learning metonymic senses.The results show that Chinese learner’s knowledge of metonymic senses of“hand”is restricted to fixed phrases,especially verb phrases.It is also found that in the process of English learning,learners do have some preferences for basic sense,and then they learn peripheral senses by reciting some fixed phrases.

Memphis, Tennessee： A Metonym for Rock ＇n Roll, the Child of the Blues

The 1991 Booker Prize--winning novelist Ben Okri, while traveling in the Deep South after Barack Obama＇s victory in the November 2008 presidential election, wrote that Elvis Presley was a lingering deity in the city of Memphis. The images of Elvis Presley, who earned the sobriquet ＂King of Rock＂ early in his career, and that of B. B. King, the exemplar extraordinaire of the Blues, are ubiquitous in the city of Memphis, which may be regarded as a metonym for the Blues and Rock ＇n Roll. The byline for the city of Memphis is, ＂Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock ＇n Roll＂, and this fact announces itself to the visitor as soon as he/she enters the arrivals concourse of the Memphis International Airport. As one proceeds towards the baggage claims area, the images which saturate the walkway create an aura that is redolent of the city＇s vibrant Rock ＇n Roll era. Drawing on Foucault＇s notion of heterotopias, as well as Jakobson＇s work on metonymy, this paper explores the hybrid musical spatiality of the city of Memphis and its environs, as well as its iconic status in the evolution of Rock ＇n Roll which was engendered by the Blues.

Translation as Interpretation

This article is devoted to the study of one of the most important questions of philology—translation which throughout its centuries-long and rich history has been considered a sphere of philological activity of utmost significance providing an exceptional possibility for recoding and bringing philological and cultural traditions within the reach of people at large.Through the application of a variety of methods(linguo-stylistic,linguo-poetic,and comparative),the author attempts to study the process of translation,the clash of difficulties inevitably arising in that process,and offers solutions that will help recreate the vitality of the original and the uniqueness of linguistic thinking.Emphasis on the importance of the consideration of intra-and inter-linguistic correlations of language units in the original work of literature drives the author to the conclusion that the most reliable approach to literary translation is to be guided by the principle of“metaphoric displacement”.

Space-Time Cognition Contrast between English and Chinese Reflected Through Plant Metaphor Translation

This paper intends to demonstrate the differences in space-time cognition by contrasting the English translations of Chinese PLANT metaphors composed by English and Chinese translators.The materials used for analysis are two English versions of the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Mansion translated by David Hawks and Yang Xianyi.The paper hypothesizes that Chinese is more space-oriented in plant conceptualization,while English is more time-oriented.We analyzed the cognitive reasons behind different translation strategies adopted for the same PLANT metaphor and verified the deduction from example analysis in the corpus.The typical PLANT metaphor analyzed in the research is the“root”metaphor.The results indicate that most Chinese“root”metaphors are“double-imaged”metonymic metaphors,which rely on the hierarchical correlation between plant components and the accumulation of spacial characteristics through multiple metonymies embedded in metaphorical projection.On the contrary,the conceptualization of“root”and“plant”in English pay more attention to the dynamic growth of the plant rather than the spacial relations between different parts.

A Reinterpretation of Imagery in Dover Beach

The essay endeavors to explore the hidden connotation in Dover Beach through in-depth and innovative close reading.It tries to authenticate the conjecture of the harmonious co-existence of sexual and moral connotations in Arnold's Dover Beach(1867).

The Transformation of English in Postcolonial Literatures

The production of Anglophone texts by postcolonial writers has often raised the issue of translation.This article argues that the transformation of English in the postcolonial text may be seen as a form of‘inner translation’in which the text is both source and target.More importantly the postcolonial author produces a culturally signifi cant text by various strategies of appropriation and transformation that act as metonymic of the source culture.Such strategies produce what may be called the‘metonymic gap’,that cultural distance established within the text by the second language author.The article suggests that Gumbrecht’s term stimmung conveys that sense of the untranslatability of cultural difference that becomes installed in the text by the metonymic gap.It is through these strategies that the postcolonial author can convey a sense of cultural difference to a world anglophone audience,combining communicability with cultural distance.