Representation Of Emotion Metaphors In ECLDs

The traditional view on metaphor regards metaphor as a rhetorical device onlexical level. The contemporary view considers metaphor a cognitive tool. Emotion,one of the most basic aspects of human experience, tends to be conceptualized infigurative expressions. Metaphor is considered one of the most important motivationsfor such expressions. Emotion metaphors come into being through the interaction ofCMT and emotions. This thesis tries to incorporate emotion metaphorical informationinto ECLDs to help Chinese EFL learners comprehend and produce figurativeemotion expressions, and thus enhance their emotion metaphorical competence.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, the thesis explores three types ofemotion metaphors, i.e. structural emotion metaphors, orientational emotionmetaphors and ontological emotion metaphors.Through a comparative study of emotion metaphors between English andChinese, the present study finds out the similarities and differences of how eachlanguage conceptualize the five basic emotions, i.e. HAPPINESS, SADNESS,ANGER, FEAR and LOVE. The similarities are attributed to the similar physicalexperience. The differences are caused by different cultural and social experiences.The similarities and differences were further grouped into three types, i.e. a)same atthe conceptual level and same at the lexical level, b)same at the conceptual level butdifferent at the lexical level, and c)different at the conceptual level.A parallel study of the representation of emotion metaphors in five current ELDsand two current ECLDs is conducted. The parallel study finds out the strengths anddrawbacks of the dictionaries. Among all the dictionaries, MED is the only dictionarywhich managed to incorporate emotion metaphorical information explicitly. Thestrengths of MED mainly include incorporation of study pages on “metaphor andemotion” and emotion metaphor boxes. The major drawbacks of MED include the emotion metaphorical information is more like a supplementary material and is notuser-friendly enough.Finally, the present study proposes some tentative suggestions for representingemotion metaphors in the megastructure, microstructure and mediostructure ofECLDs in view of Chinese EFL learners’ needs. Some innovative suggestions includea)sense relations of related figurative expressions should be arranged from a cognitiveperspective, b)emotion metaphor boxes should be arranged from a user perspective,c)a combination of etymological information and metaphorical information would bebeneficial for the learners, d)usage notes should be given based on what might posedifficulties or ambiguities for the learners. e)a mediostructure system is suggestedwhich involves both cross-reference and external reference.