A Contrastive Study Of Death Euphemisms In Chinese And English: From The Perspective Of Metaphor

In the traditional rhetoric, metaphor is only a figure of speech. With the rising of the cognitive linguistics, the role of metaphor has acquired a renewed recognition. In the newly rising cognitive linguistics, metaphor occupies a central position, and it is regarded as an important cognitive tool to help us understand this world much better. In essence, metaphor is a perceptual and conceptualizing tool, by which man understands the changing world around. Therefore, metaphor, to be exact, belongs to a cognitive rather than a linguistic phenomenon. Whereby, it plays important cognitive functions: metaphor, first of all, falls into one of the fundamental devices for us to perceive the world we live in; secondly, metaphor serves as an important means to conceptualize experience; moreover, metaphor is an efficient source of new meanings and new ideas and thus makes it possible for us to view things involved in a new perspective. In short, metaphor has actually gone beyond the language and become an essential way by which man lives. As a basic cognitive structure, metaphor allows us to comprehend a relatively abstract concept by virtue of a more concrete concept, which is thus called conceptual metaphor.Death is not only an irresistible physiological phenomenon but also an inevitable social phenomenon. Death is an eternal subject of human beings and it is a concept that is heavily metaphorical in nature. However, death euphemism is mostly studied from the aspects of rhetoric, lexicography, semantics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, Fuzzy Theory, and pragmatics and so on. Researches on death euphemism from cognitive point of view are not systematic and complete compared with its wide application. Therefore, based on Lakoff's conceptual Metaphor Theory, this dissertation tries to make a contrastive study of the two conceptual metaphor systems in English and Chinese euphemisms, aiming to prove that various expressions of death phenomenon are partially realized by metaphors both in English and Chinese language; According to Kovecses, metaphor and culture are closely related. Thus, explanations for the similarities and differences of death metaphors in two languages can never be separated from culture. With the approaches of analyzing the real cause of similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese languages in terms of cultural universality and the cultural relativity including differential experience, differential cognitive preferences and styles, the study of death euphemisms from the angle of cognition, may reflect, to great extent, the culture-bound cognitive model of a particular nation and help to deepen our research in language and at the same time guide our language teaching and learning. It is also significant for avoiding the misunderstandings and overcoming the barriers in cross-cultural communication.