A Contrastive Study On English And Zhuang Proverbs: A Perspective From Conceptual Metaphor

Metaphor is traditionally regarded as a rhetorical device in poetry and speech. With the rise and development of cognitive linguistics since the 1970s, metaphor has been considered to be the basis of cognition, thought, experience, speech and behaviors.Conceptual metaphor is a way to cognize something comparatively abstract or inherently unstructured in terms of something relatively concrete or highly structured. Conceptual metaphor is a primary way and a powerful tool for conceptualizing abstract and intangible categories.Proverbs are brief and popular sentences with instructive implications among the folk people. For proverbs, Bacon remarked: all the talent, the wisdom and even the spirit of a nation can be found in its proverbs. Being one of the most vital part of language, some proverbs sometimes act as conceptual metaphors for people to understand the abstract concepts like emotions, beauty, theories, morality and so on. At this point, proverbs are closely interconnected to conceptual metaphors.English is one of the most widely used and influential languages in the world. Proverbs in English are abundant and of many styles. Zhuang is the language of Zhuang people, the most populous people of China's minority ethnic groups. Zhuang proverbs are unique in the world with their special structures, beautiful rhyme and rhythmical sounds.With the development of globalization, exchanges between countries and nations are getting more and more frequent. Foreign studies and cross-culture researches have been a mainstream. In history, studies on proverbs have been involved largely in perspectives of functions, semantics, and so on. As a try, for the purpose of finding out the similarities and differences between these two languages, this thesis will focus on a contrastive study of English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter I includes the objectives of the thesis, the background introduction of Zhuang People and Zhuang Language, as well as the framework of the present study.Chapter II deals with Conceptual Metaphor Theory, mainly referring to the definition of conceptual metaphor, some related basic concepts and the relevant classifications.Chapter III and Chapter IV are the main constituents of this thesis, in which the definition and some fundamental features of metaphorical proverb are discussed. And based on the sources, the syntactic characteristics and stylistic features of proverbs, the similarities and differences between English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs will be probed.After a series of contrasts and analyses, in chapter V, I draw the conclusion as follows:(1) The Conceptual Metaphor Theory ( CMT) is applicable to the contrastive study between English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs. The Zhuang metaphorical proverbs basically comply with the definition and classifications of CMT.(2) In terms of sources, syntactic structures and stylistic features, English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs share many similarities: 1)They are both widely derived from folk origins, classical works and loan translations; 2)Their expression forms largely involve employment of different sentence patterns to get their rich and colorful forms, imperative structures to gain instructive effects, balanced structures to get rhythms, inverted order to achieve emphases, and ellipsis to get brevity and so on; 3)They bear stylistic features such as brevity, colloquialism and beautiful rhyme, each of which respectively makes them short, popular and rhythmical.(3) The differences between English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs include: 1) In sources of classical works and loan translations, English metaphorical proverbs are abundant, while the Zhuang ones are rare; 2) In syntax, repetition is common in English, while couplet forms and xie-hou-yu are active in Zhuang; 3) An English alliteration mainly means the repetition of the beginning letter, while a Zhuang one means the repetition of the first sound of a sentence; 4) In rhyme aspect, Zhuang metaphorical proverbs have variants while English not.(4) Based on the same brain structure, the similar knowledge and experience, the common thinking mode of human being dominates the similarities of linguistic expressions, including the features of syntax, styles and so on. As regards the differences between English and Zhuang metaphorical proverbs, historical and cultural causes, geographical conditions and living environments can function as the convincing explanations.