A Relevance-Theoretic Study of Poetic Metaphor

Abstract

Poetic metaphors are one kind of conceptual metaphors. The previous studies showed that much attention has been paid to the conceptual metaphors in poems, but less in novels. As a result, the properties of conceptual metaphors are much limited by the root metaphors and poems. Moreover, the concept of the poetic metaphors is indefinite and regarded as the conceptual metaphors in poems, which neglects the varieties of the poetic metaphors and weakens their functions. Therefore, this study explores how the readers apply the poetic metaphors to reach the optimal relevance in the process of reading short stories under the framework of the Relevance Theory (RT), aiming to construct an interpreting model of novels from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective and implement the model in literary analysis.