An Analysis of Conceptual Metaphors in Harry Potter and the Philosophy’s Stone from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

Metaphor is not only a rhetorical device but also can be seen as a cognitive tool and a kind of thinking method. Literature, especially novels, often uses plenty of conceptual metaphors to explain abstract concepts and phenomena. This paper takes the first volume of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” as its corpus, conducting a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the conceptual metaphors within it, which is based on the theory of Critical Metaphor Analysis. The aim is to explore the connotative meaning embedded in the conceptual metaphors and systematically summarize the functions of the conceptual metaphors of novels.