A Comparative Study Of HEAD And HEART In English And Chinese From Cognitive Perspective

Traditional metaphoric study considers metaphor, which plays an important role in the modified device, as one kind of language phenomenon, a figure of speech. Compared with the traditional metaphoric study, Cognitive Linguistics regards metaphor not only a sort of language phenomenon, a figure of speech or modified device, but one type of cognitive phenomenon, a mode of thinking. In this thesis, the author conducts the metaphor study from the cognitive aspect and asserts that metaphor is the mapping from one conceptual domain to another. Metaphor, which is pervasive throughout everyday activities, is a kind of cognitive activity. The ordinary conceptual system which we depend on to think and act is metaphorical in nature.The comparison is done by different mapping models about each body word both in English and Chinese. After the comparison, the research discovers that English and Chinese metaphorical use of HEAD and HEART are more similar than different, especially in the mapping from human body domain to non-body domain and from non-body domain to body domain. This mirrors the universal cognitive principle to some degree and confirms Lakoff and Johnson's conceptual theory. At the same time, there still exist certain differences, especially in the mapping within human body-parts. In Chinese, there are many four-word idioms of mapping within different body parts to express the relationship of different things or social relationship while it's a difference in English. These differences are due to different cultural models.This thesis will, to a certain degree, enrich the study of body metaphor. At the same time, it proves metaphor's cognitive nature and metaphorical nature of human thinking from the perspective of body metaphor. In addition, this research will be helpful to the vocabulary and rhetoric teaching in English and Chinese.