A Contrastive Study On English And Chinese Metaphors From The Perspective Of Cultural Context

In recent years, metaphor has become one of the hottest topics in the field oflanguage research. It has become a focus in the area of academic study. And it has beenstudied from the aspects of cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy and psychology, etc.However, we should not neglect the fact that metaphor is an ordinary utterancephenomenon, for it is used extensively and frequently in our daily life. Hence,comprehending metaphors accurately and using them properly is also a sort ofknowledge or art.This thesis intends to study metaphors from the perspective of cultural context andanalyze the influence of cultural context on understanding metaphors, so as to make acontrastive study of English and Chinese metaphors. Here, the cultural context refers tothe broader cultural context, including physical environment, social customs andtraditions, religious beliefs, modes of thinking, values and so on. And the examples usedto support these theories are vivid, typical and commonly used in our daily life; hopefully,this will make the readers feel familiar in order to make the theories easier to beunderstood.This thesis consists of an introduction, the main body and a conclusion.The first part is the introduction, which makes a brief introduction of the internaland external situation of the research on metaphor in various fields, puts forward theproblems this thesis is going to solve and the significance of this thesis. The research onmetaphor from the pragmatic approach and pragma-cognitive approach is introduced inthis part.The second part is the main body, which consists of three chapters:Chapter One probes the knowledge of context and cultural context, placing theemphasis on the relationship between metaphor and cultural context. Several expertssuch as Firth, Halliday, Sperber and Wilson have their own opinions and definitions ofcontext, from which we can learn that context is indispensable in judging andunderstanding metaphor and furthermore cultural context has great influence onmetaphor interpretation. First of all, this chapter gives a brief review of the study oncontext, and then analyzes the necessity of context in understanding metaphor. Secondly,it introduces cultural context, involving the definition of cultural context, the necessity of cultural context in metaphor understanding as well as the functions of cultural context. Atlast, it introduces metaphor as well as the relationship between metaphor and culturalcontext.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the similarities between English and Chinesemetaphors from the perspective of cultural context. Several elements, such as the humanbeing’s evolution process and emotional factors as well as physical environment,determine nations with different cultural backgrounds have the approximate culturalproperties, which explains that metaphors in different cultural contexts have similar orsame cultural universality. This chapter analyzes the similarities between English andChinese metaphors from the perspective of natural phenomena, animals, human body,human emotion and borrowed idioms, etc.Chapter Three mainly illustrates the differences between English and Chinesemetaphors from the perspective of cultural context. Although there is some culturaluniversality and some similarities between English and Chinese metaphors, metaphorstill possesses the cultural diversity. Metaphors in different languages are connectedclosely with their social development and history. Therefore, this chapter attempts toexplore differences between English and Chinese metaphors from the perspective ofdifferent environments, modes of thinking, values, religious beliefs as well as idioms andproverbs according to Kovecses’s cultural concept of metaphor. First of all, China andwestern countries are in different environments. The environment mentioned here refersto the environment in a broader sense, including physical environment, politicalenvironment, climate, space and so on. Secondly, Chinese and western people havedifferent modes of thinking. Thirdly, Chinese and western people have various values, forinstance, Chinese people place high value on collectivism, while individualism is greatlyrespected and valued by people in western countries. In addition, Chinese and westernpeople have different religious beliefs, for example, Chinese culture is greatly influencedby Buddhism, while western cultures are affected by Christianity. Besides, Chinese andwestern idioms and proverbs are also different.The last part is the conclusion, which makes a summary to the preceding discussion,and points out the practical significance of this thesis. Metaphor is frequently used in ourdaily life, not only in our languages, but also in our thoughts and actions. People use metaphors extensively in daily communication. With the development of modern times,the society is fast changing everyday and at the same time, language and culture are alsochanging. Therefore, as the reflection of culture and expression of language, metaphor isundoubtly changing all the time as well. As a result, some metaphors are behind the timesand finally turn to be dead metaphors, and in the meantime, some new metaphors areemerging constantly. Hence, people must keep pace with the time and pay more attentionto cultural changes to get a better understanding of metaphors so that they can deepentheir understanding of different cultures. Only interpreting metaphors correctly, canpeople have a better understanding of Chinese and western cultures, so as to promote thecross-cultural communication.