| Abstract | 第1-6页 |
| 摘要 | 第6-10页 |
| Chapter One Introduction | 第10-14页 |
| ·A brief introduction to metaphor studies | 第10-11页 |
| ·The target of the research: novel metaphor | 第11-12页 |
| ·The aims of this research | 第12页 |
| ·The layout of this thesis | 第12-14页 |
| Chapter Two Previous Studies of Metaphor | 第14-26页 |
| ·The rhetoric approach to metaphor | 第14-15页 |
| ·The semantic approach to metaphor: Richards’and Black’s interaction view | 第15-17页 |
| ·The pragmatic approach to metaphor | 第17-19页 |
| ·Grice’s view of metaphor as an implicature | 第17-18页 |
| ·Searle’s view of metaphor as an indirect speech act | 第18-19页 |
| ·The cognitive approach to metaphor | 第19-24页 |
| ·Lakoff et al.’s conceptual metaphor | 第19-21页 |
| ·The conceptual blending-based approach to metaphor | 第21-24页 |
| ·The Pragmatic-cognitive approach: Sperber & Wilson’s view on metaphor | 第24-25页 |
| ·Summary | 第25-26页 |
| Chapter Three An Outline of Relevance Theory | 第26-37页 |
| ·Definition of relevance | 第26-27页 |
| ·Two Principles of relevance | 第27-33页 |
| ·Cognitive Principle of Relevance | 第27-30页 |
| ·Context | 第28-29页 |
| ·Mutual manifestness | 第29-30页 |
| ·Communicative Principle of Relevance | 第30-33页 |
| ·Optimal relevance | 第31-32页 |
| ·Ostensive-inferential model | 第32-33页 |
| ·Relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure | 第33-36页 |
| ·Explicature and implicature | 第34页 |
| ·Sub-tasks of relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure | 第34-36页 |
| ·Summary | 第36-37页 |
| Chapter Four The Working Mechanism and Nature of Metaphor | 第37-50页 |
| ·The working mechanism of metaphor | 第37-41页 |
| ·Metaphor as representation by resemblance | 第37-38页 |
| ·Two dimensions of language use: Descriptive use and interpretive use | 第38-40页 |
| ·Metaphor as a descriptive use of language | 第40-41页 |
| ·The nature of metaphor | 第41-45页 |
| ·Looseness and literalness | 第41-44页 |
| ·Metaphor as effort-imposing loose talk | 第44-45页 |
| ·Mutual manifestness as the prerequisite for metaphor understanding | 第45-47页 |
| ·Optimal relevance as the ultimate goal for metaphor understanding | 第47-49页 |
| ·Summary | 第49-50页 |
| Chapter Five How Is a Novel Metaphor Understood? | 第50-62页 |
| ·The identification of explicatures | 第51-52页 |
| ·The construction of contextual assumptions | 第52-56页 |
| ·Context is not given but chosen | 第53-55页 |
| ·Balance between contextual effects and processing effort | 第55-56页 |
| ·The recovery of implicatures | 第56-61页 |
| ·The implicated premises and implicated conclusions | 第56-58页 |
| ·The indispensable tool: bridging inference | 第58-59页 |
| ·The non-demonstrative bridging inference | 第59-61页 |
| ·Summary | 第61-62页 |
| Chapter Six Conclusion | 第62-65页 |
| ·Major findings | 第62-63页 |
| ·Implications | 第63页 |
| ·Limitations of this research and suggestions for future studies | 第63-65页 |
| Bibliography | 第65-69页 |
| Acknowledgements | 第69页 |
