A Metaphorical Analysis of Female Worship in the Kam Epic: Songs of Kam Remote Ancestors

Abstract

Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism in which people understand an abstract and unfamiliar object by comparing it to a more concrete and familiar one, according to rhetoric, while modern cognitive linguistics holds that metaphor is a cognitive mechanism in which people understand an abstract and unfamiliar object by comparing it to a more concrete and familiar one, according to modern cognitive linguistics. It’s a basic human cognitive and thinking model. Therefore, cognitive metaphor study is devoted to revealing the deep cognitive patterns of language and explaining various cognitive behaviors through languages. Myth is an important vector of human culture and has a profound influence on the formation of national cultural psychology. The Kam’s epic Songs of Kam Remote Ancestors as a narrative ancient song of the Kam covers the longest history of the Kam and has the highest content about the Kam’s ancestors. This epic has many descriptions of woman ancestors and a large number of metaphors of women as well, which reflects the unique position of women in the Kam culture. This study draws on the cognitive metaphor theory to investigate the female metaphors with the purpose of uncovering the development and evolution of the Kam’s woman worship perception in their history by using MIP metaphor identifying method.