Studies on Metaphor: State of Arts, Focuses, and Trend

This article, against the knowledge background of the three comprehensive survey works, i.e. Lin(1997), Shu(2000), Li(2000), and based on a large amount of literature, induces seven themes of the contemporary studies on metaphor, including from the theoretical study to their applications to language teaching. Important books and works,conferences and symposiums, scholars and study groups, as well as journals are briefly described. The study focuses it states are: conceptual metaphor, conceptual integration (or, blending), metonymy and other tropes. Finally, the trend for studies is anticipated: those on theories with emphasis on cognitive aspects, those combined with the neural theory of language, and those combined with the study of cultural anthropology will be carried on.