Meaning And Metaphor In English And Chinese Flowering Plants Comparative Study

An expansion of the cultural exchange has driven comparative research onmetaphor. Metaphor is not just a means of communication; it is a way ofthinking. Metaphors deepen the understanding of words and the culturebehind words. They facilitate cultural exchanges, communication, andinterpretation.There are a large number of flower vocabulary words in Chinese andEnglish. Besides the definition of the word, each flower also involvesemotional expression and perception. Flowers are infused with meanings, butthe meaning varies from different cultures. This article studies on flowervocabulary words from their etymology, analyzes how metaphors differ fromeach other in two languages, and illustrates the development of metaphors inthis word category.In the article, the study approach first started with generic words “花” and“flower” as research objects, and then collected data from corpus andetymology. Through the analysis of modern Chinese and English senses, Iexplored how the differences in these two words’ metaphors took placeduring the development of language. This article shows the process of howthese two words were created with their initial meanings and how metaphorwere developed from the initial meanings and changed in different languages.The evidences obtained from studying this process would provide a reliablebasis for the research of differences in thinking and cultural.Secondly, the research conducted on two typical flower vocabulary wordsin two languages and their metaphorical meanings when they are used. Theanalysis shows that people establish a connection between flowers withhuman emotions based on flowers’ shapes, colors, and growth environments. Both in Chinese and Western culture, flowers represent love, affection,personalities and so on. The meanings of flowers have changed from naturalattribute to social attribute. Flower vocabulary words in Chinese are closelyrelated to personality, but those words in English formed a complete systemof metaphor—flower language. So from this aspect, we can conclude thatafter the consistency in original cognitive, metaphors in these two languageswent to different directions.Many factors contributed the differences in metaphors. Resulting frommyth, religion, thought, and culture, Chinese and Western metaphoricalsystems of plant vocabulary formed their unique characteristics. Thisuniqueness is the discrepancies we need to look at. It will improve thecross-culture communication through the understanding of the discrepancies.The focus of the article is the flower vocabulary words from both Englishand Chinese literature. The different analysis of metaphor conducted in thisarticle is based on context and expression effect. The analysis also includesthe similar metaphorical meanings are added in different Chinese and Englishflower vocabulary words. Cultural vocabulary,in summing up the experiencein previous studies,based on the experiences of previous study results throughdiachronic and synchronic comparison,investigation of flowering plants wordmetaphor characteristics.At the same time people of the world can be found inthe exchange process,interplay intergration trend of gradually seekingcommon ground rules.