A Cognitive Contrastive Study On Space Metaphor In English And Chinese

Cognition refers to acquire knowledge by psychological activity. It means the process that people acquire and apply knowledge or even change it. It is the basic psychological process of human being.Metaphor uses one thing to know and experience another thing. Therefore, metaphor is rhetoric from the linguistic view. From the cognitive view, it is a way of thinking. It is the important way of human beings to know about the world, and it is also the result that people know about the world. When some space factors are mapped to the non- space concepts, space metaphor comes into being. Cognition and metaphor have much to do with each other all the time.Recent years, the scholars in the academic fields have gradually paid attention to metaphor study. The cognitive function of metaphor is well accepted in many subjects. At the same time, the differences of cognitive metaphor between English and Chinese appear gradually. This thesis analyzes metaphor in details. And it takes a cognitive contrastive study on space metaphor, and it respectively points out the differences of space metaphor in quantity, state, social relations, time and scope in both English and Chinese. Meanwhile, the author points out the meaning and suggestions of cognitive contrastive study of space metaphor for English teaching, translation, and cross-culture communication.