A Cross-cultural Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Weather Metaphors

Metaphor has been the favor of Western scholars and researchers for centuries.However, traditionally, it is viewed as the ornamental use of language, and thus amatter of mere words. The1980s witnessed the cognitive turn in metaphor study andthe cognitive linguistic theory of metaphor initiated by Lakoff and Johnson setsmetaphor free from the shackles of rhetoric. According to this theory, the nature ofmetaphor is a kind of thing being understood, known and explained by another. Undersuch claim, metaphor is a valuable cognitive tool, a means by which we comprehendthe highly abstract and elusive concepts.As part of extension of metaphor study, many scholars have conducted researchesfrom the perspective of cultural models. And their studies suggest that theconstruction and interpretation of metaphor are closely associated with culture.Weather is a familiar natural phenomenon around us. Being a reflection of one of ourbasic experiences, weather terms are often employed to describe and explain otherconcepts metaphorically, thus forming weather metaphors. However, in spite of thegreat progress we have witnessed in the field of cognitive metaphor study, weathermetaphor has not received its due attention.Against such background, the present research is carried out. That is, across-cultural comparative study of weather metaphors in English and Chinese. Eightweather terms, namely, sunny, cloudy, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, ice and snow areselected for the purpose and a corpus-based approach is adopted with occasionalreference to dictionaries. The research follows strict procedures: first, all the eightweather terms and related words and expressions in both languages are searchedthrough the corpora and looked up in the dictionary; second, typical metaphoricalexpressions concerning these words are picked out and classified; in this way, howeach weather term as a source domain is mapped onto target domains is generalized;next, after conceptual metaphors come into being, a detailed analysis is made between the English and Chinese conceptual metaphors regarding each weather phenomenonto discover the similarities and differences between the two languages. After theabove steps are completed, possible factors, especially cultural ones are provided toexplain such occurrence. In this way, the conclusions are reached and justified.The study reveals that:1. As source domains, all the eight weather terms can beused to describe and talk about other abstract concepts, such as emotion, state, qualityor quantity.2. The mapping of weather onto target domains is not arbitrary. It is basedon embodied human experience, namely, our interaction with the natural world. Ingeneral, fine weather often evokes positive feelings within us whereas terrible weatherdoes the opposite. For example, in both languages, SUNNY is usually perceived asHAPPINESS, CLOUDY is seen as GLOOM or SADNESS, and ICE is usedmetaphorically to express INDIFFERENCE.3. While English and Chinese sharemany conceptual metaphors regarding weather terms, weather metaphors do varyfrom culture to culture. For instance, in Chinese, SUNNY IS AN OPEN STATE, butso far no such metaphor is found in English; in English, THUNDER IS ATTENTION,but such metaphor does not exist in Chinese.Factors such as geographical location, climate, mode of production, valueorientation, religion and so on may account for metaphor variation. In a nutshell,metaphor is a many-sided phenomenon that involves the participation of such systemsas embodiment, cognitive processes and cultural experience. The interplay betweenbody and culture gives rise to weather metaphors that are universal or culture-specific.