How Metaphor Makes Attitudinal Meaning: A Semiotic Approach

摘要

Numerous studies, for example, Martin and White (2005: 67), have identified metaphor as a strategy for invoking attitude. However, how it works to make attitudinal meaning is still a less explored issue. Drawing on Peirce's semiotic, especially his notion of iconicity, this paper aims to explore this problem from a semiotic perspective. According to Peirce, metaphors are one of the three types of icons (the other two are images and diagrams) and can be defined as hypoicons, "which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else" (2.277). Departing from this definition and also several modern metaphor theories, this paper firstly investigates the meaning-making mechanism of metaphor, in light of which metaphor is further analyzed for its linguistic manifestations and classifications, for the purpose of finding ways to identify metaphor. On the basis of the above analyses, this paper then discusses in depth the mechanisms which metaphor employs for making attitudinal meaning.