Metaphors In Love And Time Proverbs In English And Chinese--A Comparative Study

In contrast with the traditional view of metaphor which maintains that metaphor is merely a linguistic phenomenon, the cognitive linguistic view holds that metaphor is conceptual and most of our understanding about the world and ourselves is achieved through metaphor.Based on the theory of conceptual metaphor, this thesis has made an initial attempt to compare the metaphors in the love and time proverbs in English and Chinese.Despite that a number of reputed linguists have categorized proverbs as metaphors, our study finds that not all the proverbs are metaphors though a great number of them are.Our findings show that in the love and time metaphors similarities and differences exist while differences appear more outstanding. Although not all the differences can be fully accounted for, the analysis done shows that culture casts considerable influence on the creation of metaphors.While highlighting some aspects of a concept, a metaphorical concept simultaneously hides the other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor. In this way, conceptual metaphors help to intensify the folk wisdom embodied in the proverbs.