The Culture Of Chinese Zodiacs And Metaphor Variation: Shu Yu

The culture of Chinese zodiacs is one of the most influential, dynamic and long-lived parts of the traditional Chinese culture. It is deeply rooted in the daily lives of every family and individuals of the Chinese nation. Its influences involve such fields as astronomy, geography, religion, culture and arts. Although a lot of researchers have studied its origin, development, transformation, and philosophical roots and so on, they have paid little attention to the special language phenomenon derived from the culture of Chinese zodiacs, that is, Shu Yu (Chinese-Zodiac based metaphor or abbreviated as C-Z based metaphor).C-Z based metaphor is characteristic of the Chinese nation and it is a special kind of metaphor variation derived from the traditional culture of Chinese zodiacs. In the expressions of C-Z based metaphors, the traditional Chinese zodiac signs are endowed with new connotations. Although the newly-coined signs emerging do not belong to the range of the traditional C-Z signs, they create new meanings to the traditional expressions. These traditional and newly-coined C-Z signs are used to describe the characteristics of human beings or things rather than to denote the birth year of people, and they can create some humorous, euphemistic and thought-provoking effects. Therefore, this thesis takes C-Z based metaphorical expressions as the object of study and makes a systematic corpus-based study of them from the perspectives of syntactical structure, classification, generative bases, cognitive and psychological mechanisms, and functions. The analysis of them finally shows that C-Z based metaphor is a kind of culture-loaded metaphor variation which is full of Chinese Characteristics, and the procedure of it involves a pair of special metaphorical mappings and the distant analogy, which finally determines the special cognitive and communicative functions and effects of C-Z based metaphors.The systematic multi-perspective study of C-Z based metaphors in this thesis eventually leads to the following findings:(1) The culture of Chinese zodiacs is, in nature, a kind of animal worship, or more precisely, a kind of animal metaphor behind which the conceptual metaphor HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS functions universally.(2) C-Z based metaphor is the free use and creative extension of the traditional Chinese zodiac expressions. In nature, it is a kind of metaphor variation full of Chinese characteristics and embodies the simple metaphorical thoughts of the Chinese people. Through personification, animalization and other metaphorical forms like them, C-Z based metaphor can make some connections between human beings and the world around them. The functional mechanisms of it involves a pair of special metaphorical mappings as the following: when the target is human beings, C-Z based metaphor is a direct metaphorical mapping of animalization and plantification and such metaphorical forms like them, when the target is non-human beings, C-Z based metaphor is an indirect metaphorical mapping composed of personification, animalization and such metaphorical forms like them.(3) C-Z based metaphor is also a special model of cognition through which we can understand one thing in terms of another and establish the inter-mapping and cognition from human beings onto non-human beings and from one kind of non-human objects onto another.(4) C-Z based metaphor is also an effective communicative and recreational tool. Being implicative, polite and amusing as well, the expressions of C-Z based metaphors can strengthen the intimacy between the two parties in communication.