Comparative Metaphor Study On Polysemy "Hand" In Chinese And English Idioms

The publication of the masterpiece Metaphors We Live By (1980) is a big breakfor metaphor studies from traditional rhetoric view. According to Lakoff&Johnson(1980:5), metaphor is a way of thinking and cognition, and "the essence of metaphoris understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another". With thedevelopment of cognitive view of metaphors, studies on polysemy also deviate fromthe traditional formalistic and structuralistic approach, and according to Sweeter(1990), a new sense of polysemous word isn’t arbitrary.This thesis, based on some established theories from cognitive linguistic,attempts to make a tentative quantified study on the polysemous Chinese word "手"and English word "Hand" in idioms, aiming to compare the semantic senses andcategories of these two words and explore the underlying mechanisms for semanticextension based on cognitive metaphorical points of view. Hand is the most activepart of the body, and being grounded in the theory of "bodily experience", it is one ofthe important ways in conceptualizing the world.In addition, through many of the similarities and minor differences, we draw theconclusion that on the basis of "bodily experiences" human beings have the similarfundamental cognitive activities which assume as departure for further understandingand conceptualizing the world. However, differences also arise among differentcultural perceptions of the world. Therefore, body metaphors take their roots frombodily experiences and at the same time are influenced by the specific cultures ofhuman beings.