The Cultural Similarities And Differences Between Chinese And English Metaphorical Expressions:from The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Metaphor study has gone through a long history. From the beginning of Aristotle’s Comparison Theory, humans have been regarding metaphor as a rhetoric device for nearly two thousands yeas. During these years, humans’study on metaphor has been confining to the rhetoric level. Until the1930s, with the appearance of Richard’s Interaction Theory, humans’study on metaphor came to the cognitive turning. It was Richard who brought the metaphor study to new times. From that time on, humans began to study the metaphor from the cognitive view.Later, more and more scholars’ researches came to the level of cognitive metaphor study. Lakoffs Conceptual Metaphor Theory has a great impact on metaphor study. It holds that metaphor is not just a language phenomenon, but also a cognitive tool of thought and language use. This cognitive mode is reflected in our thought, language, and action. Metaphor is a way of thinking, which reflects humans’ understanding to objective world and their inner worlds. Culture has broad and profound meanings, and it contains a nation’s history, geography, local conditions, nature environment, material civilization, customs, mind consciousness, religions and political aspects and some other aspects. Metaphor is closely linked with culture. Much deep culture of a nation is transmitted through metaphor, such as philosophy of life, world view, etc. Moreover, culture is one part of language; many cultural factors are reflected on metaphors.In our daily life, conceptual metaphorical expressions are very common. Different nations’conceptual systems are deeply influenced by their own cultures. As is widely known, Eastern countries and Western countries are similar in some ways but also different in other ways. And their language expressions are like that. It is follows that there are many cultural similarities and cultural differences between Chinese and English metaphorical expressions. The thesis is intended to analyze the metaphorical expressions from the perspectives of conceptual metaphor theory, and grope the conceptual metaphor’s links with culture, and then find many similarities and differences between Chinese and English metaphorical expressions. This comparison can shed light on foreign language teaching and learning.