A Contrastive Study Of Metaphorical Cognition In English And Chinese

Metaphor, as a figure of speech, was familiar to people over 2000 years ago. In the West, Aristotle made a systematic study of metaphor in two of his works Poetics and Rhetoric and established the principle clues to the study of metaphors in the Western rhetoric field. In ancient China, to cognize and describe things, people followed the principles "Near at hand, in his own person, he found things for consideration, and the same at a distance, in things in general." Bi (almost the same as simile in ancient Chinese) " and Xing (almost the same as metaphor in ancient Chinese) are two of the main figurations in the Book of Poetry. Bi is a figure of speech by means of comparison with other things while Xing implies interpretation by means of comparison with the similarities of other things. Both are now included in modern metaphor research. The cognitive function of metaphors was not recognized and emphasized until 1980s although it had been regarded as one way of cognition. Lakoff and Johnson point out that the metaphors come out of our clearly delineated and concrete experiences and allow us to construct highly abstract and elaborate concepts. Summarizing their own experiences, people tend to describe and comprehend unfamiliar things with familiar concepts so as to know about themselves and the things around them. Virtually, metaphor is the process of one cognitive field mapped onto another.The modem research of metaphorical cognition faces another important issue besides the study of the essential features of the metaphorical cognition, the mechanism of its formation and operation, etc. Firstly, the fundamental research about the metaphorical system should be done in languages other than English so as to prove that abstract thinking is partially realized by metaphors both in English and in the other languages. Secondly, the universality and relativity of metaphorical system should be also discussed. On the one hand, human cognitive activities are rooted in daily physical experiences. Therefore, the hypothesis of the universality of metaphorical cognition exists. On the other hand, that the human physical experiencescannot be independent of a certain culture and society implies that the diversities between metaphorical systems in various cultures exist. However, the degrees of the differences and the similarities between different languages and cultures are such questions that are urgent to be worth answering by contrastive studies. Just as Mr. Lii Shuxiang says, "To point out the differences and similarities between things is easy, but to explore why they are quite different and similar is not so easy. And that is the ultimate objective of contrastive research."In terms of cognitive linguistics, the present dissertation is the systematic and contrastive study of metaphors reflected in human bodies, space, time, basic emotions and basic colors that are related to human life both in English and in Chinese. The whole dissertation is composed of nine chapters.Chapter One is the introduction dealing with the reason for the topic selection, the research hypothesis, the research objectives and the main research approaches.Chapter Two is a review of literature about the metaphor research home and abroad. This chapter follows the process in which the dependent study of metaphor as one of the figures of speech develops into the independent study of metaphor as cognitive means. Therefore, this chapter is a brief pectination and summary of ancient and modern metaphor research in the world. Besides, on the basis of the analysis of contemporary metaphor research in our country and in the West, new questions are found and the research objective of the present dissertation is established.Chapter Three establishes the theoretical foundation of the contrastive study of the metaphors in English and Chinese. This dissertation, for the first time, explores and expounds the theoretical foundation of the contrastive study in terms of language world views, the universality and the system of metaphorical cognition, and cultural...