| Human beings cognize the world by taking their bodies as the reference point. Head, located at the top of our body, has great research value. There are a lot of head-related expressions in English and Chinese. Studying them has both theoretical and pragmatic value.The study focuses on the expressions related to head/tou (shou) in English and Chinese. The author selects 4 works written by Mark Twain and Mo Yan respectively as the linguistic data. After searching for the relevant expressions in two corpora, the author analyzes and summarizes the similarities and differences of head-related expressions through comparison and contrast from a cognitive perspective based on the conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy theory. Besides, the author also analyzes the process of semantic extension of head/tou (shou) according to the senses listed in Modern Chinese Dictionary and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and summarizes their similarities and differences.The research questions of the thesis are as follows:1. How are the senses of head/tou (shou) extended? What are the similarities and differences among their senses?2. How are head/tou (shou) used in a cognitive way? What are the similarities and differences among their uses?3. What attributes to these similarities and differences?After the analysis of the linguistic expressions, the author finds that senses of head in English and tou/shou in Chinese are extended through radiation and concatenation, both of which have coherent semantic systems. But there are similarities and differences among their senses. For instance, both head in English and tou/shou in Chinese can refer to the front or important position; but head in English mainly refers to the front position in space while tou/shou in Chinese refers to be in the front in terms of order or be ahead of a particular time point. This proves that English people and Chinese people take different perspectives in extending the meaning of words. Besides, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy, being cognitive mechanisms in shaping the concept of head/tou (shou), are used both in similar and different ways. In terms of conceptual metonymy, head/tou (shou) can refer to a person, quantity, hair, thoughts, nature and emotion. Head in English can be used as a verb directly while tou has to collocate with a verb to denote an action. Besides, when standing for quantity, tou (shou) has more referents than head. In terms of conceptual metaphor, head/tou (shou) can be mapped onto object domain and abstract concept domain under the motivation of Up-Down schema and Front-Back schema. The most noticeable difference between them is that tou (shou) in Chinese can be motivated by Center-Periphery schema while head in English can be motivated by In-Out schema, thus forming a large number of container metaphors. Metaphtonymy, formed by the interaction between metaphor and metonymy, also appears in both corpora, referring to emotion. The similarities are attributed to the same physical structure and similar bodily experiences of human beings accumulated from interactions with the world. As for the differences, due to different linguistic characteristics, cultures and thinking patterns, there are expressions unique to one nationality. |
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