| In recent years, the study of metaphor has become a hot topic. Contemporary cognitive linguists agree that metaphor is not only a rhetorical phenomenon in traditional linguistics, but also one of the basic ways of thinking for human to cognize and conceptualize the world. As an important language phenomenon, proverbs have attracted wide attention among scholars at home and abroad. However the studies on ontological metaphors of English proverbs are rare. Thus, this study attempts to analyze the English proverbs from the perspective of ontological metaphors. Through carrying out the analysis of English proverbs from cognitive linguistic views, the explanatory power of conceptual metaphor theory can be further confirmed.This study uses the system random sampling method to analyze the data. The data are mainly collected from Zeng Dongjing’s New Dictionary of English Proverbs, from which a total of 408 English proverbs are selected. Classifications indicate that 203 English proverbs involved ontological metaphors. Then the selected English proverbs are analyzed on basis of conceptual metaphor theories, especially ontological metaphor theories which was put forward by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson.Based on the overall study of the data, the conclusions can be drawn that:(1) In English proverbs, people tend to use the land, sea and air as the sources to cognize the abstract concepts.(2) Some ontological metaphor can be further elaborated into structural metaphor.(3) Ontological metaphors account for a large proportion in English proverbs.It takes 49.75% in English proverbs.(4) Studies of ontological metaphors are of significance for English learners in the improvement of their language skills.This study analyzes the cognitive mechanism of English proverbs and reveals the cognitive process of English proverbs, and also offers some suggestions on English learning. |
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