| The study of metaphor has a long history in Western countries. Especially since1970s, with the further research in metaphor, the understanding of metaphor has beendeepened: metaphor is not only a form of rhetorical device, but also a form of thought.It is an important means of man's thinking, involved in human cognitive process. Inessence, metaphor is a perceptual and conceptualizing tool, by which man understandsthe changing world around. Metaphor has actually gone beyond the language andbecome an essential way by which man lives. As a basic cognitive structure, metaphorallows us to comprehend a relatively abstract concept by virtue of a more concreteconcept, which is thus called conceptual metaphor. Conceptual metaphor is an important concept in cognitive linguistics and it isdifferent to the traditional views of metaphor. Conceptual metaphor refers to somethinginternal, operating deep in human thought, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR and TIME ISMONEY. Each conceptual metaphor heads and governs a system of linguisticmetaphors, while metaphorical expressions in language are merely surfacemanifestation of our underlying systematic conceptual metaphors. According tostatistics, about 70 percent of expressions in our daily language are derived fromconceptual metaphors. It can be classified into three main types, namely, structuralmetaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. With regard to thefeatures, conceptual metaphors embody two prominent ones: systematicity andcoherence. Emotion is the most general and important experience of human beings. Itoriginates from exposure to specific situations. Cognition and emotion are interactive.There is a systematic correlation between our emotions and our sensory-motorexperiences. The research of emotion is one of the basic parts of exploring humancognition. Emotion is abstract and hard to express. It is virtually impossible to talkabout emotions without conceptualizing them metaphorically (Kovecses1990, 2000).They are conceptualized and expressed in metaphorical terms. In view of these factors,this thesis takes up conceptual metaphors of "love" as its topic of study, as "love" is oneof the most important parts of human emotions. Though love can be classified intodifferent kinds: "family love", "friendship love", "religious love" and "love of things".What I focus on is the love between lovers and the kind of love should be translated intoChinese as "爱情". Owing to the fact that some studies on "love" have mainly beendone within the language of English, this thesis attempts to conduct a cross-linguisticresearch into the conceptualization of "love". In this thesis I explore the similarities anddifferences between English and Chinese conceptual metaphors of 'love' by analyzing alarge amount of linguistic data from English and Chinese. The research discovers thatChinese and English share many main conceptual metaphors of "love". Both Englishand Chinese have LOVE IS WAR, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS FIRE, LOVE ISUNITY, LOVE IS MADNESS, LOVE IS A PATIENT and LOVE IS FLUID INCONTIANER metaphors. These similarities reflect the fact that conceptual metaphorsof "love" both in English and Chinese are primarily rooted in common human bodilyand life experiences. Meanwhile, there exist great differences and some specificlinguistic expressions, such as LOVE IS COMMODITY, A BELOVED IS SWEETFOOD in English and 爱是农作物,爱是缘分,in Chinese. These differences arelargely due to different cultural experiences or cultural models, since the bodily and lifeexperience can only tell what are possible metaphors, and whether these potentialmetaphors are actually selected in a specific culture is mainly dependent upon thecultural experience. Hence, this thesis accounts for these differences by referring todifferent cultural experiences, classified as origin of civilization, economic pattern andeating and drinking custom in English and Chinese. This thesis makes a relatively detailed study of "love" metaphors, from thecognitive perspective instead of the traditional vi...
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