A Comparison Between English And Chinese Body-Part Metaphorization

Metaphor is traditionally viewed as a particular rhetorical device. However, in the recent years, cognitive scientists think metaphor is an important means of man's thinking. In nature, metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon. As a basic cognitive structure, metaphor allows us to comprehend a relatively abstract concept by virtue of a more concrete concept. The cognitive law that man cognizes things from the near to the far, from entity to non-entity, from the simple to the complex, and from the concrete to the abstract determines the basic role of body parts in cognizing the world. This thesis, by applying the theories of cognitive linguistics and comparing metaphors of body parts in English and Chinese, aims to study the homogeneity and heterogeneity of mechanisms and the reasons.The homogeneity and heterogeneity of Chinese and English body-part metaphorization is analyzed by examples. First, the mapping from body-part domain to non-body domain and from non-body domain to body-part domain demonstrates the homogeneity existing in these two languages. Second, different forms of idioms on body-part metaphorization in Chinese and English illustrate there exists heterogeneity in mechanisms of the two languages. At the same time, reasons why there exist homogeneity and heterogeneity will be illustrated. There are also some questions which require further research.Theoretically, this thesis tries to reveal the homogeneity and heterogeneity in the metaphorical mechanisms of the two languages by the comparative study.Practically, this thesis tries to make teachers and students realize the significance of metaphor on teaching.