Conceptual Metaphor and Cognition: From the Perspective of the Philosophy of Language

Abstract

Metaphor remains a pivotal focus in the philosophy of language as Lakoff stresses that metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon of human beings and an indispensable part of key cognitive areas. By employing a vast number of metaphorical phenomena to demonstrate the intriguing correlation between language and cognitive structures, Lakoff proposes conceptual metaphor and integrated the study of metaphor into cognition, thereby breaking away from the shackles of traditional views on metaphor. Meanwhile Lakoff has realized the nature, mechanism and characteristics of metaphors from the cognitive perspective within the framework of philosophy of language. In terms of the transition from viewing metaphor as a rhetorical device to a cognitive pattern, relevant studies not merely emphasize on the linguistic form of the metaphor, but also on its essence as conceptual metaphor relying on the subjective cognition of language users as well as the external objective environment. On the basis of the philosophy of language, the essence of metaphor shall be defined and realized. Nowadays, machine translation is developing rapidly, but there are still many deficiencies in the use of AI affective computing and metaphor processing. Studies of metaphors and imagination in literary language can enhance the performance of AI in terms of machine translation and are expected to realize the true swarm intelligence in NLP.