Contrastive Study Of Chinese And English Idioms Of Food Culture From The Perspective Of Cultural Schema Theory

As is known, different nations live in their unique geographical regions and natural surroundings, thus they have different living conditions and different dietary habits which hence further form their unique food culture. As time went by, huge amount of idioms have originated from food culture both in English and Chinese which have been further given abundant meanings with strong national characteristics. Therefore, the understanding and translation of idioms of food culture seem really difficult for foreign language learners including the author. The author intends to make a contrastive study of English and Chinese idioms of food culture from a special perspective of cultural schema theory—attempting to shed a light on better understanding, learning and even translation of English and Chinese food idioms.Over the past two decades, the application of schema theory to translation and foreign language teaching, especially reading comprehension and listening in linguistics circle has generated fruitful findings, while researchers and scholars seldom apply schema theory to the contrastive study of English and Chinese idioms originated from food culture. The value of this thesis lies in the application of cultural schematic approach to making a contrastive study of English and Chinese idioms originated from food culture to analyze the cultural schematic overlapping and differences of food idioms between the two languages from following five aspects:diet habit, dietary concepts, symbolic food, table manners and tableware. In this way the thesis can probe into profound political, religious and historical origins and background of English and Chinese idioms of food culture.