A Comparative Study Of "FOOT" In English And Chinese From A Cognitive Perspective

Since the value of human beings was found, the concept of "human" has become a focus of studies on many subjects, including linguistics. Human beings explore the world based on their bodily experience. Foot, as an important part of the human body, is of great research value. In both English and Chinese, there are quite a lot of foot-related expressions. Studies on them are of high theoretical and practical significance.The thesis aims to make a comparative study of "FOOT" in English and Chinese from a cognitive perspective. Generally speaking, there are four questions to be answered.1. What are the cognitive mechanisms of "FOOT" in English and Chinese?2. What are the similarities and differences of "FOOT" in English and Chinese?3. What are the reasons for the similarities and differences of "FOOT" in English and Chinese?4. What are the implications of the study?The research objects are "FOOT" in foot-related expressions in English and Chinese, and the corpora come from classical novels Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, authoritative dictionaries Modern Chinese Dictionary and Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, daily idioms, etc. The writer collects corpora with the help of the program, AntConc. A comparative analyzing method is adopted to illustrate the similarities and differences of "FOOT" in English and Chinese from a cognitive perspective. Firstly, English and Chinese cognitive mechanisms of foot are listed respectively. Then, a detailed comparison is made to find the similarities and differences. Next, the reasons behind the similarities and differences are explored.With detailed analysis, the writer arrives at the conclusion that conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy mainly contribute to the basic mechanisms of "FOOT" in English and Chinese. There are similarities as well differences between the cognitive mechanisms of the two languages, and the former are more abundant than the latter. The similarities between "FOOT" in English and Chinese indicate that human beings share similar perceptions on the objective world, and it is the similar bodily experience that leads to the correspondence of metaphorical, metonymic and metaphtonymic senses of "FOOT" in English and Chinese. Meanwhile, due to the linguistic, social, and cultural factors, there exist differences between "FOOT" in English and Chinese. We can find unique expressions of "FOOT" in English and Chinese respectively, and most of them are culture-based.