Abstract: With the rise of the second wave of feminism, gender studies have become a hot research topic. However, gender study from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics is still in its infancy. Therefore, it is a meaningful attempt to analyze the female metaphor and its social and cultural connotation in Japanese literature from this perspective. This study shows that, the female metaphors in Japanese literature mainly focus on four types: possession metaphor, commodity metaphor, plant metaphor and food metaphor. These metaphorical models are not only based on physical experience, but also closely related to sociocultural system. This paper holds that the social turn of cognitive linguistics is a major development trend in the future. By investigating specific metaphors, we can not only understand the social and cultural connotations hidden behind, but also provide a new research approach for cognitive sociolinguistics.

Key words: female, metaphor, Japanese literature, cognitive linguistics, cognitive sociolinguistics