A Study Of Idioms In Chinese-Korean Language From The Perspective Of Cognitive Metaphor

The Idiom is a language phenomenon that exists generally in Chinese and Korean cultures consisting of body-words accounting for quite a large part of it. Body related idiom in Korean language is similar to that in Chinese language to a certain degree because of the same body structure. Although the similarities in such condition are vast it still makes a big difference in the way of expression due to the effect of diverse culture backgrounds, ideologies, religions and the other differentiating factors. Therefore, it is very important to identify and understand the differences and similarities of idioms existing in Chinese-Korean languages in order to facilitate communication.Scholars from China and Korea already obtained comprehensive and great achievement in the field of body related idioms. In the history of the idiom research, Chinese-Korean scientists have achieved quite considerable results by studying idioms with method of lexical to traditional Rhetoric analysis. However, there is still more to progress in the study of metaphors.The study targeting on Chinese-Korean idioms has a great relativity to some facial organs such as face, eyes, nose, ears, and mouth is based on the metaphor theory by Lakoff&Johnson, which studies further in similarity and differences of metaphor of idioms related to head organs.Upon researching about my topic I came across many bold points learning new things about the background, different theories and concepts of metaphors leading me to a better understanding about the basis of Idioms in Chinese and Korean language.There are4chapters of the paper, and summarization as bellow.Chapter1is the introduction on the background of the subject, summarization of previous study illustrating research spectrum and methodology.Chapter2is an introduction on the theory and concept of metaphor and metonymy raised by Lakoff&Johnson. Chapter3is a specification of identification and characteristic of Chinese-Korean idioms, discrimination and definition of body-words, body-idioms regarding in the paper.Chapter4is core of this paper.I was able to classify Chinese-Korean idioms based on metaphor theory established by Lakoff&Johnson, Idioms with same source domain and the target domain, including Idioms from same sources with different targeting. On the other hand, idioms differing in sources, including Idioms with same targeting from different sources in order, Idioms with different source domain and the target domain.The last section is conclusion and summarization of the paper.