| Emotion is the most important life experience of human beings. And love is the most sacred and noble emotion. So to speak, the word "love" has the richest meanings among all the other words. It is a highly abstract and complex concept with abundant symbolic connotations. Therefore, people usually describe love emotion by means of concrete or tangible things, which means LOVE metaphors occur a lot in languages. Since1980s, many scholars in China and foreign countries have done lots of research on various human emotions, in which study of love has received special high attention. However, most research books and papers take love as love between lovers. In fact, love means not only love between lovers but also the kinship love and friendship love (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language1982). Love among family members and friends are also indispensable parts of human love. But previous studies paid little attention to them. The study of LOVE metaphors in foreign countries is relatively affluent, although in it love is mainly defined as love between lovers, but in China research on LOVE metaphors is relatively insufficient and lack of depth.This thesis takes conceptual metaphors of "LOVE" as the object of study, and it points out that the connotation of "LOVE" includes three main aspects, romantic love, kinship love and friendship love. It focuses on the study of LOVE metaphors from a cognitive view and aims to explore the similarities and differences of LOVE metaphors in English and Chinese and to attempt to elucidate deep cognitive, cultural and social causes of the similarities and differences through the analysis of English and Chinese songs on the basis of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. To be specific, this thesis intends to answer the following three research questions:(1) What are LOVE metaphors?(2) What are the similarities and differences of LOVE metaphors in English and Chinese discovered through the selected data from English and Chinese songs?(3) What are the underlying causes of the similarities and differences?This thesis firstly focuses on the classification analysis of linguistic data. It respectively summarizes out different kinds of LOVE metaphors in English and Chinese songs and relying on the relationship among three "Love" meanings, this thesis makes a detailed research on similarities and differences. This research finds that as for conceptual metaphors of romantic love, there are many common ones such as LOVE IS WAR, LOVE AS AN OBJECT, THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A VALUABLE OBJECT, LOVE IS INSANE etc. Meanwhile, there are variant LOVE metaphors for romantic love in English and Chinese. For example, in English, there are conceptual metaphors LOVE IS A UNITY (TWO COMPLEMENTARY PARTS AS A WHOLE ONE), LOVE IS SUN/LIGHT, THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A DEITY and THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A SMALL CHILD; While in Chinese, there are conceptual metaphors LOVE IS DESTINY, LOVE IS SILK, LOVE IS A UNITY (LOVE IS A PAIR OF YIN AND YANG), LOVE IS MOON. In kinship love metaphors, situation is the same, too. There are common ones LOVE IS A JOURNEY, LOVE IS A COMMODITY, LOVE IS NOURISHMENT, THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS A VALUABLE OBJECT, LOVE IS A MACHINE etc. Special kinship love metaphors in English are mainly LOVE RELATED TO GOD and LOVE IS SUN/LIGHT; while in Chinese there are LOVE RELATED TO BUDDISM, LOVE IS SILK/COTTON, LOVE IS A FAVOR, LOVE IS MOON etc. Then, as for the friendship love metaphors, there are many common ones such as LOVE IS A POSSESSED OBJECT, LOVE IS A COMMODITY, LOVE IS A CONDUIT etc. Meanwhile, there are variant friendship love metaphors in English and Chinese. For example, in English, there are conceptual metaphors LOVE IS LIGHT/SUN. While in Chinese, there are LOVE IS DESTINY and LOVE IS SILK/BOND.LOVE metaphors in romantic love, kinship love and family love all take on a certain kind of similarities and differences. Then this thesis explores causes of similarities from bodily experiences which includes the aspects of physiological experience and life experience, and explores causes of differences from aspects of natural environments, cultural settings, in which cultural settings include religion, track of social, cultural and historical development, philosophical basis of thought, and values. It helps understand the deep thinking and cognitive causes, cultural and social causes.On the basis of the above discussion, this thesis has taken a new angle to the research of LOVE metaphors from a cognitive view and has helped enrich the study of LOVE metaphors. And it is of reference value to English learners, translators and the communication with western cultures. |
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