| Historiography is the study of the development process and laws of human society.President Xi Jinping declares: “History is the best textbook and the best dose of sobriety.” History is an important part of human development.For a country,it is an inexhaustible driving force to lead her forward;for individuals,a correct view of history can help people deepen their understanding about history.Metaphor,as a cognitive tool,is widely utilized in various language,we are inclined to use the concrete thing to demonstrate the abstract thing.History is an abstract concept,so people are likely to apply concrete concept to illuminate their experiencing and understanding about history,thus,resulted in varied history metaphors.With the deepening development of cultural communication between China and the West,comparative studies of metaphors between Chinese and English have become an important topic and attract lots of scholars to conduct studies on multi-domain,including political discourse;sport reporting;literature reporting as well as language teaching.However,few scholars have systematically explored the history metaphor from the perspective of Extended Conceptual Metaphor.Studying the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western history metaphors can help us form a correct view of history concept,thus promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.Therefore,taking sociolinguistics as the theoretical background,this thesis modifies Kovecses’ Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory to account for the similarity as well as the diversity of history metaphor between China and America.Both qualitative and quantitative methods are applied in this thesis.Selecting the instances collected from CCL and COCA,this thesis tries to give a description and classification of data collected according to the types of the source domain and explores the similarities as well as differences of history metaphors between the two nations.What’s more,this thesis manages to dig out the reasons accounting to this phenomenon based on Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory.This thesis sets out to help people form a correct history concept and increase the cross-cultural competence through comparing the two countries’ different views of history.The results show:(1)There are plenty of history metaphors in English and Chinese,among which include 2,140 history metaphors in Chinese and 1,372 in English.(2)There exists both the universal as well as the diverse delineations about the “history”.For example,the two languages share similar expressions: HISTORY IS HUMAN;HISTORY IS LEARNING;HISTORY IS REFLECTION;HISTORY IS ART.Moreover,the unique metaphorical expressions of history in China and America also exist.For example,HISTORY IS A LONG RIVER;HISTORY IS A WHEEL are peculiar to China,while HISTORY IS CRIME is specific to America.The main purpose of this thesis is to illustrate the universality as well as the diversity between Chinese and English history metaphors.What’s more,this thesis attempts to analyze the reasons for the universality and variation based on the Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory.The results indicate that similar physiological bases and cognitive basic provide the possibility for the similarities of history metaphors between the two nations.Besides,on account of the diversity in bodily environment;cultural backgrounds;social practice as well as the cognitive preference,the disparate expressions on history also exist.Through the comparative analysis,this thesis manages to set out the aim to dig out the diversity of history concepts between the two nations to increase the cross-cultural abilities. |
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