A Cognitive Approach To Body Metaphor From Cultural Perspective

The study of metaphor has a long history in China and the west. However, metaphor was regarded as a figure of speech in the last 2,000 years and its development became a bottleneck. The rise of cognitive linguistics in the eighties in the last century vitalizes metaphor. Cognitive linguists hold that metaphor is not just a figure of speech; furthermore, it is the metaphorical thinking that we live by. The philosophical base of cognitive linguistics is Embodied Philosophy. It emphasizes three points: the mind is inherently embodied; thought is mostly unconscious; abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.People experience with their bodies and it is for this reason that there are many expressions with body parts in both English and Chinese, many of which are metaphorical. This thesis focuses on the study of body metaphorical expressions in Chinese and English within the framework of cognitive linguistics. This thesis tries to analyze the existence of the universality and diversity between them and attempts to find the relationship among body, metaphor and culture. This thesis includes four chapters:The first chapter introduces the historical development of metaphor. With introducing definition of metaphor and a number of metaphorical theories: the Theory of Substitution, the Theory of Comparison, the Theory of Interaction respectively, a general picture of the development of metaphorical theory is given. It is also pointed in this chapter that these different theories belong to linguistic theories.The second chapter gives a brief description of the cognitive view of metaphor. Embodied Philosophy is first introduced as the philosophical base of cognitive linguistics. According to Lakoff and Johnson's view, metaphors are classified into three main types: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. With the consideration of this thesis study, the relationship between metaphor and metonymy, metaphor and body, metaphor and culture is introduced.The third chapter depicts the body metaphorical expressions in English and Chinese. The major body parts involved are: head, face, eye, tongue, teeth, mouth, ear, nose, hand, foot, arm, leg and heart. This thesis finds that there exist universality and diversity between body metaphorical expressions in Chinese and English. Many of the differences between them can be well explained with a further insight into the culture.The fourth chapter discusses the universality and diversity of body metaphorical expressions in Chinese and English and finds that the universality overweighs its diversity. The universality lies on the same physiological base and in the same way of metaphorical thinking while the diversity lies in different cultural background. This thesis further points out that the diversity has a tendency to be universal in different cultures due to the cross-influence among cultures.The conclusion sums up what has been discussed in the last four chapters. This thesis emphasizes that body is the most important source target in metaphor. Metaphorical thinking is well illustrated in the body expressions in Chinese and English. The diversity lies in different cultures.