METAPHOR, METONYMY AND POLYSEMOUS HUMAN BODY WORDS

Book excerpt: Compared with other common nouns, human body words (hereinafter referred to as HBWs) are strikingly polysemous. Cognitive studies of the polysemy of HBWs have obtained many achievements in recent years, but there still exist some deficiencies, which is dealt with in this book. Based on Embodied Philosophy, category theory, metaphor and metonymy, the book aims to analyze the meanings of HBWs, particularly “foot” and “blood” in order to discuss the essence of polysemy from cognitive perspective, and then on the basis of the theoretical research the book proposes some practical implications for English vocabulary learning. The book focuses on the research of metaphorical and metonymic characteristics of HBWs by analyzing the meanings of “foot” and “blood”. There are two kinds of metaphorical mappings based on similarity, i.e. the interactional mapping between body domain and non-body domain, among which there are three sub-mappings from body domain to non-body domain: mappings of shape and appearance, mappings of situation and mappings of function. As to metonymy, there are mainly three types of metonymies concerning body parts: body part for person, body part for its relevant characteristics and body part for its relevant action. The meanings of “blood” are more polysemous when describing the relevant characteristics. The students should lay emphasis on the interaction between human body and the world, on the basic-level terms rather than spending too much time in reciting those infrequent words, and on the role of metaphor and metonymy rather than memorizing the words mechanically.