A Comparative Study To Love Metaphor In English And Chinese

With the rising of the cognitive linguistics, the role of metaphor has acquired a renewed recognition. In the traditional rhetoric, metaphor is only a figure of speech; while in the newly rising cognitive linguistics, metaphor occupies a central position, and it is regarded as an important cognitive tool to help us understand this world better and clearer. It is so important that it has become the metaphor we live by. This dissertation makes a comparative study of love metaphors in English and those in Chinese from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, with the aim of supporting the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor from the viewpoints of both English and Chinese cultures.This dissertation makes a comparative study of love metaphors in English and those in Chinese from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, with the aim of supporting the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor from the viewpoints of both English and Chinese cultures.Traditionally, metaphor is viewed as a matter of language, and as a set of extraordinary or figurative linguistic expressions whose meaning is reducible to some set of literal propositions. This view can be traced back to as early as Aristotle, who defined metaphor in terms of deviation from ordinary usage: "Metaphor consists of giving the thing a name that belongs to something else" (Ricoeur, 1975:13). According to this view, metaphor is primarily decorative and ornamental in nature. Viewed as such, metaphor was called a figure of speech, and its study was confined mostly to literature and rhetoric (Lakoff, 1986). Now, there are several theories of metaphor understanding, such as the comparison theory, the substitution theory, the interaction theory, etc. However, the rising of cognitive linguistics offers some insights into the explanation of the nature of metaphor. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), the founders of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is pervasive and essential in language and thought, and is a matter of thought. Human conceptual systems are pervasive and are structured by metaphor.A large number of love metaphors in both English and Chinese are investigated in this dissertation. They are categorized into nine groups, according to the theory of conceptual metaphor. It is found that English and Chinese share many same conceptual metaphors such as journey, human, container, plant, economic exchange, fire, war, and human body, to understand love. However, some differences also exist: they do not share the conceptual metaphor LOVE IS NUTRIENT, and Chinese tends to utilize more body parts than English does in depicting love.This study supports that metaphor is so pervasive and irreducible in the expression of abstract emotion like love that it appears to play an essential or indispensable role in our understanding and speaking. It also offers evidence supporting Lakoff and Kovecses' (1987) suggestion that emotional concepts are embodied, that is, they have a basis in bodily experience. This thesis also reveals the relationship between metaphor and culture. English language is mainly influenced by the idea of Christianity, materialism, and individualism. However, the conceptualization of love in Chinese language is strongly influenced by the Confucianism, yin-yang theory, and collectivism.