隱喻作為20世紀認知科學的三大重要議題之一,在認知機制的探索方面受到認知語言學、認知心理學、自然語言處理等多個領域的廣泛關注。從認知符號學的角度重新審視隱喻的表達和理解,隱喻被視為一種特殊的語言符號。由于隱喻表達的是非字面性含義,所以不能簡單地將語形和語義分別對應符形和符釋,而需要在考慮認知環境和心理過程的基礎上,形成一個多級符號鏈來完成解讀。從情境語義學的信息流觀點看,隱喻符號解讀的過程實質上依賴于信息的流動,一方面它由特定的隱喻概念給出制約,實現源域與目標域之間的橫向信息流動,另一方面由語義場給出制約,實現上位概念到下位概念的縱向信息流動。最后,通過重構隱喻表達和理解的信息流可以發現,隱喻信息的加工突出體現了思維的關聯性、整體性、發散性和獨特性,且這些屬性之間存在著相互作用。

As one of the three important 20 th century issues in cognitive science,the exploration of cognitive mechanisms through metaphors has received wide attention in many fields,including cognitive linguistics,cognitive psychology and natural language processing.Taking a cognitive semiotics perspective,this paper reexamines the expression and understanding of metaphors,regarding them as special kinds of linguistic symbols.Metaphors express non-literal meanings,so we cannot simply equate linguistic forms and semantic meanings with symbolic forms and the interpretation of symbolic forms respectively;instead,we need to form a multi-level chain of symbols to complete our interpretation while taking into account the cognitive environment and psychological process.From the point of view of information flow in situation semantics,the process of interpreting metaphorical symbols essentially depends on the flow of information.On the one hand,constrained by specific metaphorical concepts,it realizes a horizontal information flow between the source and target domains;on the other,constrained by specific metaphorical concepts,it achieves a horizontal information flow between the source and the semantic field to realize a vertical information flow from the upper to the lower concept.Finally,reconstructing the information flow of metaphorical expression and understanding demonstrates the way in which the processing of metaphorical information highlights the relevance,integrity,divergence and uniqueness of thought,as well as the interaction of these attributes.