THE QUANTIFICATION OF CHINESE METAPHOR --"MODERN CHINESE DICTIONARY SEVENTH EDITION" AS THE RESEARCH OBJECT

Abstract

Metaphor is an important rhetorical means to enhance the expressive effect of language art, and it is a rhetorical expression method that every language in the world has. Jonathan Culler (2018) believes that "metaphor is a basic way of cognition, and we know it by seeing one thing as another thing." Metaphor can describe people or things more vividly, make profound truths simple, and concretize abstract concepts, becoming an indispensable factor for communication and understanding between languages.

First, this article exhaustively sorts out more than 69,000 Chinese words in the "Modern Chinese Dictionary" (7th edition) (2019) according to the classification standards of metaphor vocabulary, and finds that there are a total of 853 disyllabic metaphors. Then, the research methods of material example explanation and literature data are adopted for the 853 disyllabic metaphors. The research framework of this article is constructed with theories such as word formation, cognitive linguistics, and the 853 disyllabic metaphors are strictly classified according to the division standards of pre-metaphor, post-metaphor, and full metaphor according to the analysis methods of lexicography and quantitative linguistics. The purpose is to explore the factors that affect the cognitive mechanism and development of Chinese based on the analysis results and the use of metaphors; to enhance learners' understanding and communication of Chinese culture, and to accurately use and master metaphors; and to better improve learners' appreciation of the rhetoric of metaphors in Chinese literary works.