Abstract: Linguists, psychologists and philosophers have the common concern about the nature of metaphor. They pay much attention to this issue and explore it. Especially since twentieth century, metaphor has become a multidimensional study on more subjects. They focus their attention and efforts on metaphor itself. We need to make sustained efforts to reveal its essence. Linguists’ research is based on the basic principles of “ reality-cognitive-language” from the cognitive perspective. This paper attempts to employ the recent researches on metaphor, especially the cognitive theory, to explore the pragmatic functions of metaphor from a totally new perspective compared with the traditional rhetorical approach. This paper is composed of six parts. The first part is the introduction and background and research signification of metaphor. The second part introduces some theories. The third part summarizes the concept, classification and function of metaphor. The fourth part analyzes the knowledge of cognitive and the pragmatic function of metaphor from the cognitive perspective. The fifth part lists some points for attention in use. The sixth part is the conclusion. The study of metaphor is very helpful for us to learn different languages and culture. We can acquire a lot of new information from the study of metaphor.
Key words: metaphor; cognitive metaphor; classification; pragmatic function.

摘  要：语言学家，心理学家和哲学家对隐喻的本质有普遍的关注，他们关注并探索这个问题，尤其是二十一世纪以来，隐喻已成为多学科的多维研究课题，他们把关注和努力的焦点都集中在隐喻本身。我们需要做出持续的努力来揭示他的本质，语言学家的研究从认知的角度基于“现实-认知-语言”的基本原则。这篇文章试着应用现今对隐喻的研究，尤其是认知的理论，相比较传统修辞方式从整个新的角度探索隐喻的语用功能。这篇文章有六个部分组成。第一部分是隐喻的背景研究和研究意义的介绍。第二部分是理论的介绍。第三部分是对隐喻的概念，分类和功能的总结。第四部分分析了认知的相关知识和从认知的角度分析隐喻的语用功能。第五个部分列举了一些使用中的注意点。第六个部分是总结。隐喻的研究对我们学习不同语言和文化都非常有益。从学习隐喻中我们可以获得许多新的信息。
关键词：隐喻，认知隐喻，分类，语用功能。