A Contrastive Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In English And Chinese Idioms

Nowadays, the study of metaphor is not only the object of traditional rhetoric but the object of many other subjects such as linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and translation. The study of metaphor from different angles indicates that people deeply realize the significant function of metaphor in our cognition and social activities. People usually study metaphor from rhetoric and semantic angles, for instance, Aristotle, Richards and Black. Since Lakoff and Johnson published the book Metaphors We Live By in 1980, people universally consider that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but a cognitive phenomenon.The conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson is a basic mechanism for people to form a cognitive domain and understand abstract concept. The cognitive mapping between conceptual domains becomes the core of the theory. That is to say, conceptual metaphor is a mapping from source domain to target domain. According to Lakoff and Johnson's theory, conceptual metaphors can be divided into three categories: ontological metaphors, orientational metaphors and structural metaphors. This thesis approaches English and Chinese idioms from three aspects: orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor, and structural metaphor. We use some examples to prove that many English and Chinese idioms have conceptual metaphor character, and then we compare many English and Chinese idioms and analyze the same and different source domain they adopt. Furthermore, we analyze the factors that cause the same and different conceptual metaphors appeared in English and Chinese idioms. At last, some effective methods for idiom teaching are proposed.There are six chapters altogether in the thesis. Chapter one introduces motivation and purpose of the research, and then gives the organization of the thesis. Chapter two focuses on the definition of English and Chinese idioms. Later a historical review of metaphor is presented. Finally the definition of conceptual metaphor and its working mechanism are introduced in this chapter. Chapter three is the main part of this thesis. On the basis of the theory introduced in the second chapter, this chapter approaches English and Chinese idioms from three aspects: orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor, and structural metaphor. We used some examples to prove that orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor, and structural metaphor can be universally found in many English and Chinese idioms, and we use many English and Chinese idioms which are related to our human beings, such as idioms of human body, time, emotion, and space to compare and analyze the same and different source domain they adopt. In chapter four, we analyze the factors that cause the same and different conceptual metaphors appeared in English and Chinese idioms. Chapter five proposes some effective methods for idiom teaching. Chapter six summarizes the previous chapters and draws the conclusion. The metaphorical study of English and Chinese idioms may help us have a better and thorough understanding of culture and literature, and it is also helpful for our English teaching at the same time.