| Spatial relation is the basis of constructing our cognition of the world.In Metaphors We Live By,Lakoff and Johnson reveal the significance of metaphor in human perception of the world.Orientational metaphor exists everywhere,and it maps the source domain of space onto the target domain of abstract concepts.Owing to the same physical space human beings live in,spatial terms expressing spatial relations are often in closed class,which have attracted researcher’s attention all over the world.There are quite a few studies conducted on spatial terms in the research field,such as the metaphorical extensions and motivations of corresponding spatial terms up/down,front/back,etc.,and the comparison between Chinese and English spatial terms.However,there are few studies of spatial terms in poetry which is rich in metaphors and the existing researches on spatial terms are not comprehensive enough.To fill in the research gaps,this study aims to analyze spatial terms in 300 Tang Poems and Shakespeare’s Sonnets contrastively using the corpus tool LancsBox.The Chinese spatial terms in 300 Tang Poems include SHANG(上),XIA(下),QIAN(前),HOU(后),ZUO(左),YOU(右),DONG(东),XI(西),NAN(南),BEI(北),ZHONG(中),LI(里),NEI(内),WAI(外),PANG(旁)and JIAN(间).The English spatial terms in Shakespeare’s Sonnets include up,above,upon,on,over,down,below,off,under,front,before,behind,back,backward,after,in,inward,within,out,outward,left,right,east,west,south,north,middle,side,beside and aside.There are three research questions guiding this study:(1)What are the general features of spatial terms in 300 Tang Poems and Shakespeare’s Sonnets?(2)How are metaphorical spatial terms used in 300 Tang Poems and Shakespeare’s Sonnets?(3)What are the underlying motivations of the similar and different use of spatial terms?To answer the research questions,the analysis of spatial terms includes three levels of coding.In the first-level coding,spatial terms in 300 Tang Poems and Shakespeare’s Sonnets are sorted out.In the second-level coding,spatial terms without spatial semantics are removed and the general features of Chinese and English spatial terms are presented.In the third-level coding,spatial terms with metaphorical extensions are selected,categorized and analyzed contrastively in terms of their metaphorical senses and internal motivations according to different categories.Through categorization and analysis of spatial terms,the major findings are summarized as follows.Firstly,Chinese spatial terms in 300 Tang Poems can be divided into static and dynamic ones with spatial terms doubling as verbs.This result may be explained by the fact that a single character in Chinese can be used as different parts of speech such as a verb,a noun or a preposition.In English,spatial terms are mostly prepositions which require to be matched with other words as a supplement in a sentence.The characteristics of English prepositions also lead to more metaphorical extensions of English spatial terms in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.Secondly,the categorizations of metaphorical extensions of Chinese and English spatial terms are similar,which further illustrates the universality of human cognition based on similar bodily experience.Thirdly,the metaphorical extension of SOCIAL STATUS of Chinese spatial terms shows a prominent frequency of occurrence,which can be explained from the perspective of ancient Chinese feudal political system and cultural background.From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,this research compares and analyzes Chinese and English spatial terms in two representative poem collections.The similarities and differences of Chinese and English spatial terms are interpreted from the perspective of human experience,language structure,geographical feature,historical and cultural background,providing a reference for the contrastive analysis of Chinese and English spatial terms.Meanwhile,it has significant implications for cross-cultural commnication,poetry translation and second language learning of spatial terms. |
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