A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Heart Metaphors In English And Chinese

In the old times, due to the underdevelopment of science, the human organ heart was regarded as the source of thought. This has been kept as a habit until today. Physiologically, the heart acts as the controlling center of all blood in the human body. As the most important human organ, the heart inevitably has close associations with human activities. Language is one of the most fundamental activities of human life, and studies on language have always aroused great interest among linguists and philosophers. During the past few decades, metaphor has attracted more and more attention because of its close relations to language. Metaphor is a universal phenomenon in language. Traditionally, it is thought to be a mere decoration for language and exist only in language. Lakoff and Johnson's work Metaphors We Live By marked the outset of a cognitive approach to metaphor studies, assuming that metaphor exists not only in language, but also in action and thought.As the heart and metaphor are both essential for human life, this thesis tries to study those metaphors related to the heart, from the aspect of cognition. When we study language, culture cannot be ignored. So this study is designated to be a contrastive one between two languages and two cultures. Through contrastive studies on heart metaphor in English and Chinese, it will become clear how different such metaphors function in different ways in English and Chinese, and the preferences they enjoy in the two languages. Moreover, as language is a mirror of thought and part of culture, the contrast reflects some similarities and differences in the two different cultures. In order to reveal the relationship between metaphor and thought more clearly, heart metaphors are classified into three main categories suggested by Lakoff and Johnson--- orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor and structural metaphor. This way of classification best suits a cognitive approach. During the study, it is found that container heart metaphors, which fall into the category of ontological heart metaphors, exist in quite numbers, so such metaphors are picked out for separate study.Methodologically, this study is based on self-made corpora and statistic analysis. There are two corpora -- an English one and a Chinese one, each having 25 modern novels taken from a large range randomly as samples. Through data collection and statistic analysis, it is found that both English and Chinese show some similarities and differences in terms of the use of heart metaphors. The major similarities are: English and Chinese use a similar number of orientational metaphors, although this number is very small; each of the three types of basic metaphors classified in this thesis accounts for a similar proportion in all heart metaphors in English and Chinese; in both languages, ontological heart metaphors account for the largest proportion in all heart metaphors, while orientational heart metaphors the smallest;whether in ontological heart or in all heart metaphors, container heart metaphors account for a large proportion; this is true of both English and Chinese. The major differences are: generally, there are more heart metaphors in Chinese than in English; There are more ontological and structural heart metaphors in Chinese than in English; Whether in ontological heart metaphors or in all heart metaphors, container heart metaphors account for a larger proportion in Chinese than in English;The study also tries to suggest some possible causes for these similarities and differences, hoping to provide some clues for similar studies in the future. Besides, it is undeniable that methods employed in this thesis--concrete data and statistics, will be of great suggestive value for future similar studies.