A Cognitive Approach To CONTAINER Metaphors In English And Chinese

Metaphor used to be regarded as a deviation from the ordinary language or figure of speech. It is now believed by cognitive linguists that metaphor is part of the ordinary language and ubiquitous in our everyday language. It is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. It is a powerful tool for conceptualization of abstract categories. Metaphor is universal, but there are variations due to cultural differences.This research adopts the cognitive linguistic framework developed by Lakoff (1987) in carrying out a comparative analysis of CONTAINER metaphors in English and Chinese. By taking the cognitive approach to metaphor, this study is subscribed to the view that metaphorical thinking is part of the cognitive processes through which the human mind conceptualizes the world. By focusing on CONTAINER metaphors for investigation, this study assumes that CONTAINER metaphors, realized through spatial concepts IN/OUT and LI/WAI, play an especially indispensable role in our abstract thinking.This study examines the similarities and differences of metaphorical extensions of the image-schematic concepts, namely IN, OUT, LI and WAI. Two groups of data are collected and analyzed: lexicographical data and corpora data. Lexicographical data are adopted so that the metaphorical extensions of the concepts under concern as reflected in lexicon can be discovered. Corpora data are adopted so that the distributions of those metaphorical extensions as reflected in real life English and Chinese can be revealed.Through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the study has found out: (1) all the four concepts under investigation are deeply grounded in bodily experience and also can be used to structure the same abstract target domains, namely EVENTS or ACTIVITIES, TIME, STATES, QUANTITY, SOCIAL STATUS and LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS; (2) remarkable similarities mark the metaphorical extensions of IN/OUT and LI/WAI; (3) the two languages differ especially in the places given to SOCIAL STATUS and EMOTIONS.The findings of this study offer a piece of evidence for the possible existence of a universal CONTAINER metaphor system. The cognitive linguistic claims that our abstract reasoning is at least partially a metaphorical version of image-schematic reasoning and that metaphorical mappings are grounded in our bodily experience are also reinforced.