Accompanied by the bright sunshine of China’s National Day and the refreshing clouds of Mid-Autumn Festival, the second "International Distinguished Lecture Series" hosted by the School of Foreign Languagesof Henan University came to an end in Tencent Cloud.
Following the five consecutive lectures on “Classical Conceptual Metaphor Theory” last semester, Zoltán Kövecses, a tenured professor from Roland University of Hungary,was invited once againto give another series of academic lectures on “Extended Conceptual Metaphor”. Approximately 300 faculty members, postgraduates and graduate students from Wuhan University, Shandong University, Southwest University and other universities have joined the activity.
Speaking on the forefront of conceptual metaphor theory, Professor Kövecses elaborated on the levels, new views and context of extended conceptual metaphor theorythroughfive lectures based on his new book "Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory" published in 2020.
Right after his proposal of the schema hierarchy of metaphorsin the first lecture, including image schemas, domains, frames and mental spaces, Professor Kövecses continued to explain the distribution of deliberate metaphors and idioms from the four levels of schematicity, and pointed out their relevant research schools andmethodologiesin the second lecture. Histhird lecturerevealed that the metaphors in real discourse, in essence, were induced from contexts. Context, as he proposed,could be further divided into situational context, discourse context, bodily context, and conceptual-cognitive context as well. Duringthe fourth lecture, Professor Kövecses summarized the important components of the extended conceptual metaphor theory, mainly including the types of metaphorical meanings, the schema level of conceptual structure, memory (i.e. long-term memory and short-term memory), and the ontological level (i.e. subindividual level, supraindividual level and individual level). Meanwhile,withinherent systematic correspondence and relevance, these four theoretical components enhances the organic and systematic nature of conceptual metaphor theory. In today’sfifth lecture, Professor Kövecses respondedthe problems and challenges encountered by conceptual metaphor theory in the past 40 years, and proposed “a personal process model” of the conceptual metaphor and its operational processes in detail. It is expected that further studies can provide more psychological reality for this model. Then, Professor Kövecses conducted evaluation, comparison and contrast of Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory with other theories, such as Blending, Deliberate Metaphor, Structure Mapping, Relevance Theory, as well as Dynamic System View of Metaphors. He also stressed that Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory could provide a better explanation than Classical Conceptual Metaphor Theory.
Finally, Professor Yang Chaojun, the dean, delivered a closing speech, expressing his gratitude to Professor Kövecses who has been teaching hard for the past month, and hoped that he would be able to give lectures in person in the future.
Prof. Kövecses has exhibitedthe audience ageneral picture on conceptual metaphor theory with innumerable citations and strong sense of humor,exhibiting his unique individualstyle and personality charisma as a language master. His well-received lecture series clearly outline the levels and internal relations of many conceptual metaphor theories, and enhance our understanding of conceptual metaphor theories as well, which has important enlightening significanceto all the faculty members forthe improvement of academic quality and innovation ability. (News Reporter: Li Pandeng)
