A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Temporal Metaphors And Their Cultural Implications

Time is an abstract concept which is invisible and intangible. The cognitive linguistics holds that the temporal concept is projected through the spatial concept. In the spatial temporal metaphor aspect, the traditional cognitions and theories are based on dynamic mode with facing the future:the time moving metaphor and the ego moving metaphor. Such cognition is too generalized and not exact enough, unable to explain many English and Chinese temporal metaphors. Therefore, based on this problem, according to the cognition to the spatial position and the different visions of the observer, on the one hand a supplement is made to analyze the identifications and differences in English and Chinese temporal metaphors at the horizontal level with the static spatial-temporal mode in which the observer facing the past; on the other hand at the vertical level the spatial temporal metaphors are expounded with the different observation points and the observer’s states. Meanwhile, the irrationality and unscientificity are disclosed in the traditional frameworks of contrastive studies of English and Chinese temporal metaphors at three basic levels-"spatial metaphors","ontological metaphors" and "structural metaphors". Therefore, from the perspective of rhetoric, this research is carried out in a novel framework on seven aspects:’spatial temporal metaphors’,’personalized temporal metaphors’,’materialized temporal metaphors’,’event temporal metaphors’,’abstracted temporal metaphors’,’colorized temporal metaphors’and’allusion temporal metaphors’. The linguistic phenomenon is traced to the source from the perspective of culture and deep into the thinking modes comprehensively. Finally, the cultural implications and the epochal enlightenments of temporal metaphors are revealed.