A Study Of English And Chinese Animal Metaphors From Cognitive And Cultural Perspectives

Metaphor plays an important part in people’s life. The traditional theory regards metaphor as a figure of speech. With the publication of Metaphors We Live by, people began to study metaphor from the perspective of cognition. Modern cognitive linguists view metaphor as a way of thinking and cognition. Metaphor exists not only in our daily life, but also in our cognitive activities. Language and cognition are closely related. It is more and more popular to study language from the perspective of cognition. Language is the product of cognitive activities and the carrier of culture. Language is closely related with cognition and culture. It is more and more popular to study language and culture from the perspective of cognition.Animal is an important part of human’s living environment. Both linguists and sociologists pay a lot attention to the studies related with animal terms. There are many metaphors using words and expressions related with animal terms as source domain. Metaphors using animal terms as source domain to describe human beings or other areas occupy a big part of language. As a way for human beings to cognize the world, animal metaphor deserves our penetrating study. However, most current studies about animal metaphor just explain the superficial cultural phenomena from the perspective of culture. Those studies do not touch upon the working mechanism of animal metaphor. Under the framework of cognitive linguistics, the author points out that the mechanism of animal metaphor is based on the Cross-domain Mapping and the Great Chain of Being metaphor. The author makes a contrast between English animal metaphors with Chinese animal metaphors from the perspectives of cognition and culture. The author finds out that there are similarities and differences. The similarities lie in that same kinds of animal metaphors have similar connotations and the differences lie in that different kinds of animal metaphors have different or same connotations. At last, the author analyzes the reasons for this phenomenon from the perspective of cognition and culture.This paper consists of four chapters. Chapter one is literature review which presents the studies of metaphor and animal metaphor in the West and China. Chapter two is theoretical foundation which shows the working mechanism of animal metaphor is based on the Cross-domain Mapping and the Great Chain of Being metaphor. Chapter three is the contrastive analysis of animal metaphors in English and Chinese. The author first gives the mapping modes of animal category onto human beings, then analyzes the similarities and differences between animal metaphors in English and Chinese. Chapter four is the analysis of underlying reasons for this phenomenon from the perspectives of cognition and culture.This paper has some theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it enriches the study of animal metaphor by offering abundant evidence to the study of individuality and universality of animal metaphors in English and Chinese. Practically, it helps language learners know the working mechanism of animal metaphor and gives inspirations for foreign language teaching and inter-cultural communication.