A Cognitive Analysis Of Proverbs In English And Chinese

According to Gibbs Raymond (1995), proverbs are those familiar, fixed, sentential expressions that express well-known truths, social norms, or moral themes. Proverbs have existed in all languages. People have used them to express their understanding of their beliefs, values and their surroundings in ordinary daily conversations. Meanwhile, many proverbs offer important guidance in how people ordinarily live. Language is part of culture, and at the same time, it is carrier of culture. As important components of traditional culture, proverbs are effective elements that transmit human culture. It is at this point that we can say that the use of proverbs is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also an important cultural one.Being such an important linguistic and cultural phenomenon, proverbs have always attracted scholars' attention, at home and abroad. However, most previous researches on proverbs tend to emphasize the comprehension and translation of individual proverb from the perspective of traditional linguistics, lacking deep analysis of the cultural factors behind them. Besides, there are fewer comparative researches on proverbs selected from different languages.Based on above reasons, the researcher chooses to analyze Chinese and English proverbs from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. To begin with, the thesis reviews the researches on proverbs at home and abroad. Next, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory are expatiated so as to construct the theoretical framework for the analysis. Subsequently, a comparative study of English and Chinese proverbs reveals the different cultural patterns behind them: individualism versus collectivism, equality versus hierarchy. Meanwhile, the working mechanism of proverbs, the conceptual interaction patterns, the generic-level structure and the extended invariance principle are expounded. On this basis, case studies of love and time proverbs in English and Chinese are carried out.From the foregoing analysis, conclusions are drawn that although proverbial expressions may vary across cultures and reflect different cultural patterns, the cognitive mechanism speakers use to understand and to produce them are the same. Nonetheless, a further study on languages other than English and Chinese would provide evidence for their universal systematicity.