A Study Of Eating Metaphors In English And Chinese: Cognitive And Cultural Perspectives

Metaphor has been an important topic of research in many scholarly disciplines. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to eating metaphors despite its rich variety of usage in almost every field of our life. This thesis is a case study of English and Chinese eating metaphors. It attempts to test the contemporary theory of metaphor from general cognitive and cultural perspectives relying primarily upon dictionary-based meanings of words related to eating.The study points out the universality and variation of eating metaphors in the two languages. It also probes into the causes for this universality and variation. In all, the study identifies and abstracts 23 (near-)universal conceptual metaphors shared by both English and Chinese, 5 conceptual metaphors that exist in English but not in Chinese, and 11 conceptual metaphors that exist in Chinese but not in English. In addition, more than 100 metaphorical expressions are presented to support them. The author attributes the universality to the common human bodily experience (universal ways of eating and universal feelings of taste) to support Lakoffian's statement that metaphors are embodied. However, embodiment provides only a potential basis for metaphorical conceptualization. It is both differential social and cultural experience and differential cognitive processes that produce metaphor diversity. Drawing upon Kovecses' Variation Theory, the author analyzes the variation in our metaphorization of eating concepts through the differences of our physical environment, social and cultural context, social and personal history and social and personal interests.The research done lends further support to the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor and demonstrates the importance of cross-lingual and cross-cultural study; especially it enriches the discussion of metaphor variation in English and Chinese. The findings help us understand how and why we metaphorize through eating concepts; meanwhile, they help us to better know the relationship between language and thought. In addition, they help English and Chinese language students understand the semantic development of eating-related words and how such words reflect culture.