Similarity Of Metaphor And Its Application In Chinese And English Culture

As a pervasive phenomenon in our daily life, metaphor is an indispensable part of all cultures with similarity being its base. To interpret a metaphor is actually to find the similarity of it. Therefore it's quite important to make an in-depth study of similarity. What is similarity, are there any rules about it and its application in our daily life? These are what this dissertation is about.The overall review over the literatures on studying similarity shows the significance of similarity to metaphor and various classifications from different linguistics. This dissertation makes its own classification in a more visualized way into objective similarity and subjective similarity thus making it much easier and simpler for foreign language learners to interpret a metaphor.As different cultures have different senses of values, the structuring of metaphor may vary from culture to culture. This dissertation adopts qualitative research method - a survey has been carried out among attendants from two different cultures. The results prove similarity of a metaphor may be affected by various cultural factors; the same similarities can be found in different cultures due to the similar natural environment human beings inhabit in and similar body structures etc; while different geographical locations, lifestyles, eating and dressing habits etc are factors causing differences in understanding similarity of metaphors.When it comes to our daily life, we can find overseas students usually feel great difficulty in interpreting metaphors in dish names, nicknames, place names etc. They are easy to get confused with the political and economic reports in newspapers or magazines.Based on the theory of cognitive approach, with huge amounts of dish names and nicknames in both Chinese and Western culture analyzed, the dissertation lists out new rules hidden in the forming of the metaphors and falls them into new categories with similarities as the basis; by analyzing expressions in political and economic reports-the most two important aspects in one culture, the dissertation lists out some formula and organism of similarity in between.By writing this thesis, the writer hopes to find out some common rules applicable for the overseas students in learning a new culture so as to provide a new and efficient way to help them avoid misunderstanding in communication and help them to have a broader and clearer vision about the new culture they are learning as well. The writer also hopes this thesis can achieve its expected pragmatic application.