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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
CHEN Hong-zhi, SUN Yi
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2025.11.001
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
This paper explores how metaphors function as both cognitive blueprints and narrative building blocks, examining their role in shaping meaning through Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Kövecses’ Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory (ECMT), the study analyzes two central metaphors: the rose as “LOVE IS A LIVING ORGANISM” and the desert as “LONELINESS IS EMPTINESS.” The rose metaphor, instantiated through care-oriented language (e.g., “waters,” “protects”), activates nurturance schemas rooted in embodied experiences, framing love as a fragile organism requiring cultivation. Cross-linguistic variations in translations further reveal how cultural values filter universal cognitive structures. The desert metaphor evolves from a symbol of existential void (“no houses, no people”) to an epistemological threshold, with its transformation marked by sensory richness (e.g., “hidden water”), exemplifying Bakhtinian chronotopic metamorphosis. Neurocognitive evidence (e.g., fMRI studies) confirms that metaphor processing engages both language and sensorimotor brain regions, bridging cognitive science and literary analysis. These findings highlight metaphor as a dynamic nexus of language, thought, and culture, with implications for education, where metaphor serves as a cognitive scaffold for abstract reasoning.
metaphor, cognitive linguistics, The Little Prince, conceptual metaphor theory, narrative analysis, embodied cognition, cross-cultural variation
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, November 2025, Vol. 15, No. 11, 809-815
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