A Cross-cultural Study Of English And Chinese Proverbs From The Perspectives Of Metaphor And Metonymy

Proverbs,the wisdom of ages,are prevalent and ubiquitous in our daily communication,serving the purpose of showing truth,giving advice or conveying morality.Up to now,a large body of work has been done on proverbs,involving the syntax and semantics,the analysis in their discourse functions,as well as the contrastive exploration.However,too little known about the integrating and synthesizing a cognitive perspective into an empirical study on the English and Chinese proverbs.The current research,based on embodied philosophy and within the framework of conceptual metaphor/metonymy theory as well as conceptual blending theory,attempts to adopt the quantitative,qualitative as well as the contrastive approach to address the three questions as follows.(1)To what extent do the proverbs adopt the cognitive mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy?(2)What are the similarities and differences in the cognitive mechanisms adopted by the English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts?(3)What are the similarities and differences on cultures and values behind English and Chinese proverbs?To resolve those questions,the present study collects 113 English proverbs and their near-synonymous Chinese counterparts from various sources,including A Dictionary of English Proverbs,101 American English Proverbs,ABC Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs,A Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs,and the list of English proverbs on the phrase finder website http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html,and establishes a small-scale corpus for further empirical analysis and then classifies them into four groups in the light of the international proverb system.It indicates that Type A,namely,“Knowledge,learning and practical experience”,ranks first with the proportion of 43.36%,followed by Type D,“Social interaction and relationships”(30.08%),and then Type C,“Wisdom,strategies and methods”(20.35%),and Type B,“Faith and attitudes”(6.19%)among English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts.Here,both of the English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts are more centered on the proverb type of “Knowledge,learning and practical experience” than the proverb type of “Social interaction and relationships”,let alone the proverb type of “Faith and attitudes”.After identifying the conceptual metaphor and metonymy applied in those proverbs,the paper reveals that both of the English and Chinese proverbs adopt the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metaphor more than the cognitive mechanism of conceptual metonymy(64.6%: 23% for English proverbs;63.72%: 15.04% for Chinese proverbs).Furthermore,in large part,the English proverbs employ the cognitive mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy(87.6%).When it comes to the Chinese proverbs,78.76% items adopt the cognitive mechanisms of conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy.In terms of Type A,although“Misery loves company”and“????”are equivalent in large part,the cognitive mechanisms behind them are different.To be specific,one is the conceptual metonymy of“Misery”stands for“People who are miserable”while the other one is metaphor of“Misery or trouble”is“Moving object”.Moreover,even some of the proverbs mediated by the same cognitive mechanisms of Type B,the source domains for those conceptual metaphors are not the same,like“United we stand,divided we fall”and“??????/????,????”?Besides,of those proverbial metaphors and metonymies,some proverbs adopt a primary metaphor,such as“????”which entails the conceptual metaphor of“Misery or trouble”is“Moving object”while others like“United we stand,divided we fall”,involve the compound metaphor of“Unity is Collectivism”and“Division is Individualism”.Also,the proverbs may involve the metaphor-metonymy interaction,for example,“Birds of a feather flock together”.Here,the conceptual metaphor is“Human beings are Animals”while the conceptual metonymy is“Feather for Bird”.Furthermore,it is of great importance to compare the cognitive mechanisms behind them as well as the source domains or vehicles between English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts.In this respect,the comparison here makes it possible for us to find out the similarities and differences on social values or beliefs between English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts.The English proverbs and their Chinese counterparts do share certain features,such as the similar cognitive mechanisms,the similar source domains or target domain,and the cultural values of closeness to physical experience in the English proverb“He who would climb the ladder must begin at the bottom”and the Chinese“????,????”.However,compared with English proverbs which are focus on industry or individualism,the Chinese proverbs are featured by the value of collectivism and philosophy of heaven-man harmony or balance.In a nutshell,the present study,to some extent,theoretically enriches the theory of metaphor and metonymy and practically calls for the effective cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication.Besides,it can shed light on proverb acquisition assisted by the theory of metaphor and metonymy.Yes,the paper moves a small step towards the quantitative dimension.However,the corpus is still small-scale and it lacks the data from the real-life texts of different genres.Moreover,it would be better to analyze the proverbs in usage events thus gaining more fresh insights.