


































Education, Language and Sociology Research 

ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

178 
 

Original Paper 

A Cognitive Approach to Expressions of English Metaphors 

Li Xue1 

1 Foreign Language School, Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, Nan Jing, China 

 

Received: May 10, 2023          Accepted: May 29, 2023      Online Published: June 16, 2023 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v4n2p178       URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v4n2p178 

 

Abstract 

This paper analyses the three expressions of English metaphors: nominal metaphors; verbal metaphors; 

adjective metaphors from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. For nominal metaphors, the author 

starts from metaphorical mapping mechanism, interpreting the different syntactic features of them: as a 

subject, an object, a predicate, an appositive and a possessive, figuring out the reasons for producing 

nominal metaphors and its cognitive approach. For verbal metaphors, this paper has, in detail, analyzed 

three different categories of them: the verbal metaphors with a logical subject predicate collocation; the 

ones with a logical verb, object collocation; and with a logical subject, predicate, object collocation with 

the above three kinds of linguistic theories, obtaining the forming mechanism of the verbal metaphors 

and its working ways in languages. For the adjective metaphors, this paper mainly applies the mapping 

theory between a source domain and a target domain in Conceptual Integration Theory. A comprehensive, 

detailed and systematical analysis of adjective meanings in basic adjective metaphors and metaphorical 

combinations of basic adjectives leads to the following conclusion: the combination of basic adjective 

metaphors is the result of the “Least Effort Principle” with characteristics of simplicity and popularity. 

In addition, it also possesses the capability to produce richer metaphorical expressions. 

Keywords 

Metaphor, expression, cognitive linguistics, popularity 

 

1. Introduction 

This chapter is an introduction to the whole thesis. The first section consists of a background, followed 

by the purpose and the significance of the study in the second section, the research questions and 

methodology in the third section and the research object and scope with a highlighting of the whole 

structure of the study in the final section. 

Expressions of metaphors belong to one of the categories of linguistic research. The linguistic theories 

all come from man’s life, which are the inductions of life. The examples supporting the theories also 

result from our life practice and they are deducting the origin and evolution of these theories. 



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A famous English rhetorician, I. A. Richards (1973) puts it that a kind of metaphor emerges in every two 

sentences in our daily conversations. Metaphor makes the broad and profound languages of the human 

beings much plumper. The systematical research about metaphor in the west can be traced back to 

Aristotle 300 B. C. Aristotle (1954) thinks that metaphor is a kind of linguistic method that is applied to 

substitute a word with another word to convey the same meaning. The both are in a comparative relation, 

whose main function is modification. 

However, from the perspective of the development history of the metaphorical research, and it has broken 

through the rhetoric restrictions, which, in the west, can be divided into three stages: first, the research is 

carried out from the aspect of metaphorical rhetoric, which lasts from 300 B. C to 1930s. The second is 

the stage where metaphorical semantics is studied from two research directions: the metaphorical 

semanteme is studied from the perspective of logic and philosophy as well as linguistics for more than 

four decades until the early 1970s. The third stage is from 1970s to the present. The western scholars 

carry out all kinds of deep research and explorations about metaphor from the multi-angles and multi-

levels, such as the perspectives of cognitive psychology, philosophy, pragmatics, semiotics, 

phenomenology, hermeneutics and so on. 

The study of systematical metaphor in China starts late, however, recently in order to meet the 

requirements of the Chinese-foreign language and cultural exchanges. The linguistics and foreign 

languages in China start excavating and sorting the statements about metaphor made by Chinese authors. 

The research scopes, interests and levels of the metaphorical phenomenon are being improved little by 

little. In China, a civilized country with a long history of several thousand years, the Chinese scholars in 

every field are devoted themselves to exploring and studying metaphor. 

Research can be defined as a systematical approach to finding answers to questions. Reflecting on one’s 

experience and feelings, or giving unwarranted judgments and groundless viewpoints, is not a veritable 

study. Linguistic research is the systematical study of languages, usually with respect to a particular 

aspect of it which can be categorized into conceptual research and empirical research. The former 

depends heavily on speculation/deduction, e.g. the study of the origin of language. The latter, 

characterized by the use of induction and the process of hypothesis formation-confirmation, can be 

further classified into quantitative research (like an experiment and a survey) and qualitative research 

(like field work and case study), each type having its advantages and disadvantages. Quantitative research 

is empirical research where the data are in the form of numbers. Qualitative research is empirical research 

where the data are not in the form of numbers.  

At present, English corpora are adopted in metaphor research in China, while few Chinese corpora are 

used in it. In metaphor research, it is found that quantitative analysis only account for 5%, revealing that 

the ways of studying linguistics in which Chinese scholars adopt are not sufficient. Some Chinese 

scholars psychologically resist quantitative analysis, not willing to adopt the way, while adopting the 

ways of observance, introspection and reasoning, which are used traditionally by Chinese scholars. 

Maybe this is a deficit in metaphor research in China. 



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Qualitative approach is adopted as a research method in this study. Data collected are used to explore the 

cognitive mechanism of verb metaphors with a logical subject, predicate collocation; a logical verb, 

object collocation and a logical subject, predicate and object collocation. The Chinese Corpus CCL 

(Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU) and the English Corpus BNC (British National Corpus) are the 

supportive foundation for the data. 

 

2. Method 

As is known to all of us that, a large number of the contemporary disciplines, including linguistics, now 

that the descriptions of the research object cannot meet the satisfaction, they have begun regarding the 

interpretation as one of the most significant objects. The study about the expressions of English 

metaphors is supposed to have two objects: the descriptions for the expressions of English metaphors as 

well as the interpretations for this phenomenon. The full descriptions are the prerequisites of the 

interpretations, while the interpretation is one of the highest aims of any discipline. The interpretation for 

the expressions of English metaphors ought to involve psychology, sociology, philosophy, linguistic, etc. 

The definition of metaphor studied in this chapter will be elaborated in Chapter Three thoroughly. From 

the perspective of the cognitive linguistics, the author has analyzed the expressions of English metaphors 

and summed up the formation mechanism. The study about the expressions of English metaphors is a 

kind of interdisciplinary knowledge, which requires researchers to be entitled with a broad mind and 

profound knowledge. 

 

3. Result 

We can find out that the way of English metaphor is to compare a concrete thing to another concrete 

thing or to an abstract thing or to compare an abstract thing to another abstract thing. The English 

metaphor is not only similar to the Chinese metaphor but also to the Chinese metonymy, imitation and 

exaggeration. Namely, the English metaphor covers much more the Chinese metaphor, which means that 

among the English similitude figures of speech, except for the simile, any other analogy can be called 

metaphor. 

Metaphor often adopts the shallow and common things to interpret the profound hows and whys and 

describe the features of the thing, making the thing more lively, vividly and concrete, giving the readers 

a distinct impression. Understanding the expressions of metaphor plays a significant role in literary 

creation and appreciation and English teaching. 



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4. Discussion 

4.1 Nominal Metaphor 

A nominal metaphor refers to a metaphor that is composed of nouns, which belongs to one of 

constitutional features of metaphorical syntax. Next we are going to start from the mapping mechanism 

of metaphor with some concrete examples, explaining reasons for producing nominal metaphors with 

different syntactic features and the cognitive approaches from the perspective of cognition. 

4.1.1 As Subjects 

Take the following sentence for example: 

(12) Another challenge of the sponsor comes from his rival. 

In this sentence, “challenge” is derived from a root metaphor, “Economy competition is a battle.”, where 

the source domain is “battle” and the target domain is “economy competition”. A structural metaphor 

refers to a corresponding relationship between the mapping from the source domain to the target domain, 

where the cognitive structure of the source domain is systematically mapped into the target domain. This 

kind of mapping relationship is in a single direction but with a multi-layers. Therefore, the above nominal 

metaphors belong to structural metaphors. 

4.1.2 As Objects 

Let’s look at the following two sentences: 

(13) Over mountains, through mist, I love you as pure as morning dew. 

(14) We may have to go our separate ways. 



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The above two sentences depict love. We can see that the two“loves” both metaphorically refer to a 

journey, which implies a conceptual metaphor, “love is a journey”. In these two sentences, “journey” is 

a source domain and “love” is a target domain. “Mountains” and “mist” reveal “entities of barriers during 

travelling” and “difficulty in an episode of love”. “Our separate ways” shows “a fork in a road” and 

“emotional differences in a love”, which corresponds with “travelers get together” and “harmony and 

division between lovers”. 

4.1.3 As Predicates 

Let’s look at the following two sentences: 

(15) The earth is human’s mother. 

(16) An interest is a best teacher. 

Judging from the above two sentences, they both adopt the rhetoric device: personification. The former 

compares “earth” to “mother”, the latter “interest” to “teacher”. Lakeoff and Johnson state in Metaphors 

We Live By that the most apparent ontological metaphors refer to the fact that a physical object is further 

identified as a person, which enables us to understand various experience of non-human entities from 

human motivations, features and activities (Lakeoff & Johnson, 1997, p. 116). However, the 

personification is not a single and unified process, and every personification varies with divergent aspects 

of these chosen persons. It is obvious that the two both sentences belong to an ontological metaphor. The 

former transfers the vehicle, a mother’s bringing up her posterity to the tenor, the earth, and the latter 

transfer the vehicle, a teacher’s enlightening students to the tenor, “interest”. Moreover, another kind of 

nominal metaphor as a predicate in a sentence is derived from a root metaphor. These metaphors tend to 

be stored in human’s conceptual systems, which cannot be perceived by people reflecting an early 

cognition to the nature and the whole world. According to statistics, 70% expressions of metaphors in 

general languages are derived from root metaphors. These metaphorical concepts are not only 

systematical in thinking and languages but also are consistent with cultures of different countries. 

4.2 Verbal Metaphors 

Verbal metaphors are linguistic phenomena which are formed by the conflict between a verb and a logical 

subject or an object. The verb constitutes a novel collocation relationship with its front noun so that a 

kind of non-conventional semantic relationship is formed. Different from a conventional relationship, 

this non-conventional possesses a meaning relevance in a specific context and the noun collocation with 

the verb possesses an actual reference. At this moment, the verb is recognized as a verb metaphor, in this 

kind of metaphors, a tenor and a vehicle seldom directly emerge, while they will emerge by verbal 

reflection, that is to say, the action structure, a behavior mode and a logical relationship keep 

unchangeable. Compared with nominal metaphors, verbal metaphors are difficult to recognize, for it is 

hard for us to judge whether there is an inconsistency between a source domain and a target domain 

especially those verbs, such as, “make”, “put”, “have” etc. In order to recognize the verbal metaphors, 

firstly we should clarify the collocation relationship and meaning related to verbs in a discourse so as to 

define the metaphorical meanings of the logical subject and object located before and after the verb, and 



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at last the concrete category of metaphorical terms can be defined. For example, (23) Their dream slipped 

away. In this sentence, the verb “slipped away” collocates with the noun, “dream”. As we all know, 

“somebody” often collocates with “slipped away”, therefore, here, a metaphorical meaning is produced, 

and at this point the verb realizes the metaphorical interpretation. 

According to collocation relationship among subject, predicate, object in a syntactic form, Wang Yin 

(2007) divides verb metaphors into three sorts: the metaphors produced by conceptual conflicts of a 

logical subject; the metaphors produced by conflicts of a logical verb and object; the metaphors produced 

by a logical subject, predicate and object. That is, the metaphors with collocation of a logical subject and 

predicate; the metaphors with collocation of a logical verb and object; the metaphors with collocation 

with a logical subject, predicate and object. This part of study on expressions of metaphors recognizes 

verbal metaphors in the masterpiece Six Chapters Of A Floating Life (《浮生六记》) to explore its 

cognitive mechanism. Six Chapters Of A Floating Life is a typical masterpiece of art in Chinese literature. 

This part adopts corpus from it, exploring cognitive mechanism of verb metaphors in the original text, 

effectively promoting the dissemination of cultural and aesthetic connotations of this literary work. Based 

upon the classification of verbal metaphors, the author has summed up 55 kinds verbal metaphors. 

Among them, there are 24 examples of verbal metaphors of Logical Subject Predicate Collocation, 

accounting for 46.2%, 17 examples of verbal metaphors of Logical Verb Object Collocation, accounting 

for 32.7% and 11 samples of Logical Subject Predicate Object Collocation, accounting for 21.1%. 

Accordingly, the below comparisons of verbal metaphors classification in Six Chapters Of A Floating 

Life is shown in Table 1 as follows: 

 

Table 1. Comparisons of Verbal Metaphors Classification in Six Chapters Of A Floating Life (Notes: 

LSPC: Logical Subject Predicate Collocation; LVOC: Logical Verb Object Collocation; LSPOC: 

Logical Subject Predicate Object Collocation.) 

 LSPC       LVOC LSPOC 

Language Examples     29       17       14 

Proportion     52.7       30.9       25.4 

 

From this table, it is obvious that the highest proportion of verbal metaphors is Logical Subject Predicate 

Collocation, followed by Logical Verb Object Collocation, and the lowest is Logical Subject Predicate 

Object Collocation. The main reason for this phenomenon is that syntax dominated by a logical subject 

predicate is a common sentence pattern, while the implementation conditions of a logical subject 

predicate object is that a logical subject predicate object contains metaphorical meanings in syntax, 

therefore, there are the fewest metaphors among the three kinds of verbal metaphors. 

 

 



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4.2.1 The Verbal Metaphors Cognitive Mechanism of a Logical Subject and Predicate Collocation  

The logical subject predicate collocation metaphors in verbal metaphors are non-conventional meaning 

collocation metaphors caused by conflicts between a verb and a logical subject. In a discourse, a logical 

subject uses a non-conventional verb to collocate and then an intense conflict is produced between the 

two both, forming a verbal metaphor. For example, (24) I went up the tower one snowy day; the beautiful 

snow-flakes dancing in the sky above and silver-clad hills and jade bedraggled tree below gave one the 

impression if a fairy world. 

Six Chapters Of A Floating Life 

This sentence describes an event when Shen Fu with his friend climbed the Yellow 

Crane Tower.  

 

 

Figure 2. The Cognitive Model of the Verbal Metaphor with Logical Subject and Predicate 

Collocation 

 

According to the Figure 2, Original Text, “O” for short and Translated Text, “T” for short implied the 

two parts (left and right triangular prism) in the same verbal metaphor as a whole (a cube) and the arrows 

from left to right shows the cognitive process from “O” to “T”. According to the logical structure of 

subject, predicate, object in the sentence three vertices (triangular prism) of “O” and “T” respectively 

highlight as the logical subject (Sub), predicate verb (V) and logical object (O). In this logical subject 

predicate verbal metaphor, “the beautiful snow-flakes dancing in the sky above”, the logical subject is 

“snow-flakes” and the predicate verb is “dance”. These are mapping verbal metaphors from the source 

domain, “snow-flakes” to the target domain, “dance” from top to bottom. 

In this verbal metaphor, this predicate verb, “dance” makes the logical subject, “snow-flakes” produce a 

semantic conflict with it so that a novel verbal metaphor of the logical subject and predicate is formed. 

Through this verbal metaphor, the scene of snow-flakes being blown disorderly by strong winds and 

dancing aimlessly in the air instantly emerges, enhancing the vividness of depicted images. Original 

subject (Osub) is similar to “dancer” in terms of behavioral features. And the metaphorical meaning is 

represented by the restriction of the verb, “dance” to the noun “Osub”. In the above sentence, “the 

beautiful snow-flakes dancing in the shy above” the logical subject, “the beautiful snow-flakes” 

corresponds to “Osub”, reproducing the verbal metaphor of flying in the original language so that vivid 



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views depicted in the sentence is holistically copied. There is a close metaphorical relationship between 

the source and input language with similar semanteme and strong dynamic roles. 

4.2.2 The Verbal Metaphors Cognitive Mechanism with Logical Verb and Object Collocation 

The verbal metaphors of the logical verb and object collocation is a non-conventional meaning 

collocation metaphor caused by the conflict between a verb and a logical object. In a discourse, the verb 

uses a non-conventional logical object to collocate and an intense conflict is produced between the two 

both, producing a verbal metaphor. For instance, (25) the fifteenth of the seventh moon was All Souls’ 

Day.Yun prepared a little dinner, so that we could drink together with the moon as our company. 

.........Six Chapters Of A Floating Life 

This sentence describes that after Shen Fu married Chen Yun, they recited poetry and enjoyed music, 

leading a happy life. 

 

 

Figure 3. The Cognitive Model of the Verbal Metaphor with Logical Verb and Object Collocation 

 

As the Figure 3 shows, the triangular prim on the left denotes the source language “the moon” and the 

right one denotes the Translated Text “together with the moon as our company”. The logical verb object 

collocation, “the moon on the left source, in this mapping of the verbal metaphor, the highlighted vertex 

is the predicate verb “invite” and the logical object “the moon”. In this sentence “Yun prepared a little 

dinner so that we could drink together with the moon as our company”, the original meaning is that Chen 

Yun was drinking while enjoying the moon with Shen Fu, where the logical object “the moon”, this novel 

collocation is adopted to regard the moon as our guests invited by Chen Yun to drink and sing together. 

The predicate verb “invite” activates common features of the logical object “the moon” and the noun 

“the guests”, both of which can be as accompanies while drinking, completing the mapping process 

between the source domain, “the moon” and the target domain, “the guests” in this verbal metaphor (top-

to-bottom arrows in the Figure 3), vividly conveying Chen Yun’s leisure and elegance drinking happily 

in moonlight. During understanding the verbal metaphor “Yao Yue”, the translation “invite the moon” is 

not used, while the translation “together with the moon as our company” is produced, which does not 

only abandon the verbal metaphor of the original text but also is consistent with English expression. In 

this triangular prim of Figure 3 on the right, the vertex is turned into the logical subject “the moon”, the 



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predicate verb “company” and the noun “the moon” is formed and then the sentence is bestowed with a 

metaphorical meaning. 

4.2.3 The Verbal Metaphorical Cognitive Mechanism of Logical Subject Predicate and Object 

Collocation 

The verbal metaphors of logical subject predicate and object collocation are mainly caused by a kind of 

semantic conflict when a logical subject collocates with a non-conventional logical object. In other words, 

the semantic conflict is formed between a logical subject and a verb; between a predicate verb and a 

logical object. And then the kind of metaphors is called verb metaphors with a logical subject predicate 

collocation. For example, (26) when I went up on board the boat, I saw the peach and pear trees on the 

banks were in full bloom, but I felt like a lonely bird that had lost its companions and as if the world was 

going to collapse around me. 

The sentence describes the scene that Shen Fu will depart with his wife for further education.  

 

 

Figure 4. The Cognitive Model of the Verbal Metaphor with Logical Subject, Predicate and Verb 

Collocation 

 

At departure, it is a sunny and blooming season. At this time, Shen Fu is solitary like an abandoned bird 

in woods. In this sentence, “the peach and pear trees on the banks were in full bloom” shows a beautiful 

scene. Just as the Figure 4 shows, in the triangular prim of the source language on the left, the subject, 

predicate and object collocation is three highlighted vertexes, “Osub” stands for the logical subject, “the 

peach and pear trees” “OV” for the predicate verb, “scratch” and “Oo” for the logical object “beauty”. 

On one hand, the logical subject, “the peach and pear trees” forms a novel collocation with the predicate 

verb, “scratch”, on the other hand, the predicate verb, “scratch” also forms a novel collocation with the 

logical object “beauty”. Through association meaning, “the peach and pear trees” are compared to 

“beauties”. The scene of blooming peach and pear trees is like beauties flocking together to be selected. 

The two possess similarities. “The beauty” of the peach and pear trees is like an article which can be 

“scratched”. The verb “scratch” activates the metaphorical semanteme of this sentence. In the triangular 

prim on the left, from up to down is respectively a conceptual domain “beauties” and “the peach and pear 

trees”; “ontological objects” and “beautiful scene”. They are interactively mapping, depicting a beautiful 

scene of garden flowers blooming in a lively manner, which contrasts sharply with Shen Fu leaving alone 

in a boat, indirectly highlighting his reluctance to part with his wife. 



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4.3 Adjective Metaphors 

Adjectives are the words that are used to describe qualities or attributes. Basic adjectives directly come 

from interactions between human beings and nature, reflecting basic cognition of physical attributes. 

This part explores habitual expressions where adjectives are put in front of nouns, such as, “a soft ear---

a credulous person”, “soft tasks”. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, they are metaphorical 

collocations. 

4.3.1 Motivations and Mechanism of Basic Adjective Metaphorical Collocations 

A metaphor consists of a source domain and a target domain, whose essence is to use a kind of thing to 

experience and understand another thing. A conceptual metaphor is made up of four aspects: a source 

domain, a target domain, an experiential basis, and a mapping. Metaphorical cognition is to project 

schema structure of a source domain onto a target domain. Such a mapping is realized between two 

different cognitive domains, whose basis is experience. Next, adjective metaphors are analyzed from 

syntactic category, such as, “melancholy flowers”, “thunderous applauds”. Adjective metaphors 

represent metaphorical features of thinking. Attributes of the things are mapped onto another thing, 

acquiring understanding of the thing. The similarities between a source domain and a target domain are 

direct which can be shown by adjectives in adjective metaphors. For example, “soft ears”, it doesn’t mean 

that ears are soft, while this phrase refers to a person without the ides of his/her own, who is credulous. 

Since “ears” are organs used to hear something, and the adjective “soft” is used to describe a man’s 

characteristic. Such similar adjective metaphors are as follows: “a jelly-fish”, “soft heart”, “long tongue”, 

“frank” and so on. This kind of adjective metaphors, nouns are human body’s organs metonymy of 

people’s feelings, personalities, abilities and behaviors. Since basic adjectives are highly generalized with 

many similarities, the different things with the same attribute can give different feeling to people under 

the different circumstances. For example, people will get the different feelings when they eat ice-cream 

in cold winter and sultry summer. When people metaphorically use basic adjectives to convey their 

subjective feelings, the source domain is covert, concealed in people’s experiential schema formed by 

daily life, thus, the source domain tends to be featured by its non-uniqueness and non-fixity. The source 

domain of the basic adjective metaphorical collocation, which is concrete or abstract but mainly is 

abstract, such as, “soft knife” and “soft nail”, here, “knife” and “nail” are respectively compared to 

“methods of harming people” and “refusal”. “Soft knife” and “soft nail” seem to be unnatural, for they 

are against people’s conventional experience. However, it is not hard for us to understand, for people 

have a good command of “softness” of its natural attribute. The collocations between “soft” and “knife”; 

“soft” and “nail” respectively add the meanings, “subconsciousness” and “euphemism”. This kind of 

adjective metaphors produce the effect of “the whole is greater than the sum of its part”. In a certain 

context, on a social occasion and under a certain cultural background, if a speaker and a hearer have 

common sense, a hearer is able comprehend a metaphorical meaning by virtue of people’s unique 

metaphorical thinking without a series of pragmatical processing procedures and principles. 

 



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4.3.2 Adjective Meaning in Basic Adjective Metaphorical Collocation 

About semanteme, Shao (1996) points out that semanteme is divided into two parts: objective conceptual 

meaning and subjective color meaning. The conceptual meaning reflects that contents of an objective 

thing’s own, and the color meaning mostly reflects people’s subjective cognition, where rhetoric 

meanings are included. Feng Zhicun (1995) points out that word meanings can be divided into two types: 

conceptual and subsidiary meanings. Conceptual meanings have something to do with concepts, 

reflecting a real phenomenon significance. A monosemy word has only one conceptual meaning, and for 

a polysemous word, it has at least two kinds of conceptual meanings. The original, basic, extended and 

metaphorical meanings in a polysemous word all belong to the conceptual meaning. The above contrasts 

show that a conceptual meaning is less wider than a terminological meaning. The reason is that the 

perspective of concept is different. The former tends to recognize an objective base of cognition, while 

the latter more clearly reflects dynamic conceptualization of diachronic. 

 

5. Conclusion 

English metaphor is a special cognitive phenomenon occurring in human languages. English metaphor 

is not only a kind of cognitive phenomenon but also a sort of special phenomenon of language use. It 

occurs in almost every field, such as literature, education, art, medicine and so on. Based upon what I 

have analyzed in the above chapters, the following conclusions can be drawn: 

1) This paper studies the expressions of English metaphors from the perspective of the cognitive 

linguistics: nominal metaphor, verbal metaphor, adjective metaphor. Through the study, the author has 

found that the understanding of English metaphor is a hierarchical structure that integrates language, 

cognition and culture into one unit. In addition, the understanding of English metaphors mainly depends 

upon the construction of new cognitive schema to realize the cognition and the understanding of the 

target language.  

2) Through the study about the expressions of English metaphors, the author has made the following 

discoveries. First, the transfer of the cognitive schema of culture prevails in the process of metaphorical 

comprehension. Second, the contexts can provide the informational basis for the inference, playing a 

significant part in understanding metaphor. The author has also found that their understandings of 

metaphor, to some extent, relies upon the co-texts and the contexts. 

 

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