A corpus-based synchronic comparison and diachronic interpretation of lexicalized emotion metaphors in English and Chinese

This study is a corpus-based contrastive study of the cross-language diachronic changes and synchronic variations of lexicalized emotion metaphors (LEMS) in English and Chinese within the framework of cognitive linguistics. Since it is based on a series of basic assumptions of the Lakoffian Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), it is also expected to prove or improve them by making this cross-cultural comparative study of LEMS in English and Chinese. Therefore this study aims at not only the diachronic changes and synchronic variations of LEMS but also the cultural factors underlying them. By applying CMT in the analysis of the corresponding data of LEMS in English and Chinese, and the method of comparative etymology to explore the cultural influences on the variations over the metaphor themes of LEMS in the two languages, this study has achieved a number of findings.