A Study Of Emotional Metaphor From The Perspective Of Culture

Throughout the domestic and international study on metaphor, the contemporary theory of metaphor has broken through the boundaries of traditional rhetoric research. It is no longer simply considered a rhetorical device of language, but also a cognitive phenomenon. Moreover, it is an important way of human thinking and a cognitive activity which allows people to comprehend or explain the experience of another domain by virtue of that of a certain domain. This paper attempts to conduct a cross-cultural research into conceptual metaphors of emotion from the perspective of cognition, analyzing and contrasting Chinese, English and Russian emotion metaphors of happiness, anger, sadness, and fear. Besides, this paper summarizes and analyzes the origin of similarities and dissimilarities of Chinese, English and Russian emotion metaphors. Through comparative analysis of emotion metaphors from a cross–cultural view, this paper reflects the close relationship among culture, metaphor and language and points out the similarities and differences of different cultures in cognitive style, which plays an important theoretical significance and practical value on the cognitive linguistics, foreign language teaching and intercultural communication.