A Contrastive Study Of Conceptual Metaphor In Friends And My Own Swordsman

The Conceptual Metaphor Theory put forward by cognitive linguists Lakoff & Johnson assumes that metaphor is the way in which human beings think, act and speak; the nature of metaphor is comprehending and experiencing one thing in terms of another. On the basis of CMT, the thesis makes a contrastive study of conceptual metaphor in Friends and My Own Swordsman. Its purpose is to discover the similarities and differences between the source domains of the metaphorical items and explore the factors causing the similarities or differences by analyzing the source domain of conceptual metaphor in English and Chinese.Taking Conceptual Metaphor Theory as the theoretical framework and metaphorical mapping as the research method, the thesis has collected 141 items of English conceptual metaphors and 157 items of Chinese conceptual metaphors from the first three seasons in Friends and the first twenty episodes in My Own Swordsman, and classified them into three groups in terms of different source domains:156 items of structural metaphors,63 items of orientational metaphors and 79 items of ontological metaphors. A detailed analysis of source domain of conceptual metaphor in English and Chinese is made to find out the differences or similarities between them and an attempt to explain it from cultural perspective is further made.Through contrastive analysis between English and Chinese conceptual metaphors in Friends and My Own Swordsman, the thesis comes to the conclusions:Firstly, the abstract concepts in Chinese are also structured through metaphorical mapping from source domain to target domain. Secondly, it is confirmed that there exist differences as well as similarities between source domains of metaphor on the same concept in English and Chinese. Thirdly, due to the common physiological basis and life experience shared by all human beings the English and the Chinese have the similar understanding to the same concept, thus, the main expression for the source domain in English and Chinese is similar, but there exists difference in the detailed description for the source domain because of the influence of different culture modes. Several cultural factors are reinforced to account for the differences: ①religions and philosophy thoughts, of which Taoism and Buddhism in Chinese culture and Christianity in English culture are the root for the differences ②natural environment ③literary works and historical allusions and ④social customs.