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The Fractal Construction Models of Personification Metaphors: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
LIU Chunjie, WANG Jinjun
Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies    2025, 25 (5): 186-195.   DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2025.05.019
Abstract   (42 HTML2 PDF(pc) (1294KB)(37)  

From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, personification is a rhetorical device grounded in the conceptual metaphor that attributes human qualities to non-human entities. To systematically elucidate its construction, this study introduces fractal theory and the concept of “feature-based metaphor”. Its cognitive mechanism involves extracting specific features from the fractal manifestations of the vehicle “human” and mapping them onto the tenor. By integrating frame semantics and individual behavior theory, this study deconstructs the concept of “human” into six fractal dimensions - physiology, behavior, cognition, emotion, personality, and situation - yielding six models of personification metaphors. Cross-cultural personification metaphors of “wind” in Chinese and Russian literary works serve to validate the models’ applicability. This research clarifies the cross-domain integration of personification metaphors, advances the application of fractal theory in cognitive linguistics, and offers new insights for cross-cultural metaphor comprehension in foreign language teaching.


“风”的拟人隐喻建构模式 汉语拟人词汇 俄语拟人词汇
词频 占比 词频 占比
拟“人的生理表象” 18 6.59% 27 2.27%
拟“人的行为表象” 206 75.46% 975 82.00%
拟“人的认知表象” 5 1.83% 19 1.60%
拟“人的情绪表象” 11 4.03% 68 5.72%
拟“人的个性表象” 17 6.23% 92 7.74%
拟“人的境遇表象” 16 5.86% 8 0.67%
总计 273 100% 1189 100%
表1 汉语和俄语“风”的六种拟人隐喻模式及拟人词频和占比
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