A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Negative Emotion Metaphors From The Theoretical Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor

Metaphor has been regarded as a figure of speech for a long time by traditional metaphor theories, while conceptual metaphor theory holds that it is a cognitive phenomenon, a significant way of thinking. It is an activity which allows people to comprehend or interpret the experience of one domain by virtue of that of another domain.According to cognitive linguists, metaphor not only is an important tool in human cognition and thought, but also plays a vital role in the conceptualization of emotion. Therefore,emotion concepts have close relations with cognition. Abstract concepts like human emotions are largely comprehended and expressed in terms of conceptual metaphors.This paper tries to overcome the limitations of traditional approaches which confine metaphors to the rhetorical field and attempts to conduct a cross-linguistic research into the conceptualization of negative emotion. Based on a large amount of linguistic data from English and Chinese, it attempts to explore the similarities and differences between Chinese and English conceptual metaphors of three basic negative emotions including sadness, anger, and fear. The conclusion is that negative emotion metaphors are rooted in bodily experience and influenced by cultural models as well, that is, conceptual metaphors of negative emotions are characterized by cognitive universality and cultural diversity. Meanwhile, this study is expected to be helpful for translation practice, cross-cultural communication,and foreign language teaching.