A Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of Life Metaphor In English And Chinese

Metaphor has attracted the attention from many scholars in cognitive linguistics.The study of metaphor has a very long history. This thesis makes a corpus-basedcontrastive study of life metaphor in English and Chinese within the framework ofConceptual Metaphor Theory and image schematic structure, aiming at exploring thesimilarities and differences in understanding life and further in the outlook on life.It is found that the PATH schema plays a dominant role in structuringmetaphorical concept in both languages and various concepts are thus mapping ontothe domain of life. In English there is much more influence of the CONTAINERschema and life is seen as a property possessed by individual, whereas in Chinese, theoutlook on life is influenced not so much by individual, but by the society‘srequirement as a whole. There is a generally acknowledged way to understand lifewhich should be exerted on individual through education. The difference betweenEnglish and Chinese comes from the difference in cultural values, the formerhighlighting individualism while the latter collectivism.The innovation and significance of this thesis lies in the research method andfindings. This thesis employs a corpus-based method instead of the traditional methodof introspection in studying life metaphor. The two corpora used in this thesis are theBritish National Corpus (BNC) and on-line corpus designed by the Center for ChineseLinguistics, Peking University (CCL), both of which are large, well-recognizedcorpora. So the approach is empirical and the data retrieved are comprehensive andreliable. The research findings reflect the language use in actual contexts. It isdiscovered that the major difference in understanding life metaphors lies not in thespecific metaphorical concept, but in the way to look at it from different perspectives,which results from cultural values.