A Comparative Study Of Cognition Between Chinese And Indonesian Idioms Containing "eye"

Idioms are the most active and vivid component of a national language,which are closely related to national culture.Idioms containing the word “eye” are common in both Chinese and Indonesian.Based on the theory of cognitive linguistics,this article conducts a comparative study of Chinese and Indonesian idioms containing the word“eye” mainly through the cognitive metaphor theory by Lakoff & Johnson,the cognitive metonymy theory by Radden & Kovecses,and interaction theory of cognitive metaphor and metonymy by Goossens,Ruizde Mendoza & Velasco,with the attempt to explore the system and similarities and differences of the cognitive and semantic features embodied in the “eye” in Chinese and Indonesian idioms,and to reveal the characteristics of national psychology,historical culture,social customs and lifestyles hidden behind the two languages.The research results show that the cognitive and semantic features embodied by the word “eye” in Chinese and Indonesian idioms possess both commonality and individuality,in which individuality is greater than commonality on the whole.As for Chinese,the mapping range of the word “eye” mainly includes three conceptual domains,namely,the domain of human behavior,the domain of human emotion,and the domain of human attitude.In Indonesian,however,the mapping range of the word“eye” mainly involves a single broad conceptual domain,that is,the domain of human behavior.The cognitive and semantic commonality embodied by the word “eye” in Chinese and Indonesian originates from the same cognitive model,as the two different ethnic groups use roughly the same cognitive thinking to form idioms and have similar rationale behind cognitive mapping.In contrast,the cognitive and semantic individuality embodied by the word “eye” in Chinese and Indonesian is influenced by a variety of factors,including regional culture,mindset,language,and the way of observing the characteristics of “eyes”.In addition,the findings of the present study also support the views held by many cognitive linguists,confirming the universality and relativity of human cognitive thinking.On the one hand,this study verifies the conceptual interaction theories of Goossens,Ruizde Mendoza and Velasco,which proves that metonymy often plays the basic role of metaphor in the interaction between metaphor and metonymy with real corpus.In other words,metaphor mapping depends on metonymy in most cases.On the other hand,this study also puts forward two suggestions for improving the theories proposed by Goossens,and Ruizde Mendoza and Velasco.First,some additions and some improvements are made to Goossens' s theory,specifically,deleting one item and adding two items.Second,it raises objections to the core view of Ruizde Mendoza and Velasco's theory that metonymy always serves metaphor;instead,the present study believes that metaphor can also serve metonymy in few cases and advocates re-examining the essence of the theory from a new perspective.