A Comparative Study Of Animal Idioms In English And Chinese: A Conceptual Metaphor Theory Perspective

This thesis makes a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese animal idioms in order to achieve three purposes. First of all, this thesis attempts to verify the conceptual metaphor theory further and tries to demonstrate that animal idioms are rich in conceptual metaphors. Secondly, by collecting and rearranging animal idioms data, this thesis has abstracted conceptual metaphors in these animal idioms data, thus to find out the similarities and dissimilarities in the conceptual metaphors of English and Chinese animal idioms. At last, this thesis has also discussed causes leading to these similarities and dissimilarities from perspectives such as culture and people’s bodily experience. And this thesis also bears the hope to shed light on the study of English and Chinese animal idioms.This thesis has raised and answered three questions, namely what are the classifications of animal idioms from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory? What are the properties of mappings in animal idioms? What are the causes for the similarities and dissimilarities of the metaphorical usage of animal idioms in English and Chinese? By referring to idiom dictionaries, the author has collected a large number of animal idioms, and then abstracted conceptual metaphors in these animal idioms. And the conceptual metaphors abstracted are classified into three types, namely structural metaphors, ontological metaphors and orientational metaphors in English and Chinese animal idioms. The structural metaphors in animal idioms has chosen animal idioms data of six kinds of common animals, and then abstracted conceptual metaphors in them and made comparative analysis between these conceptual metaphors; ontological metaphors in animal idioms consist of personification and container metaphors; there are also some orientational metaphors in animal idioms, but the proportion is quite smaller than that of the former two types. This thesis has also launched analysis of causes leading to the similarities and dissimilarities of the metaphorical usage in English and Chinese animal idioms after abstracting and classifying conceptual metaphors in animal idioms. And the author has found out that the “Great Chain of Being” hypothesis and similar bodily experiences are the main factors leading to the similarities of conceptual metaphors in animal idioms, and different natural environments, religions, social conventions as well as worldviews are the main causes of the dissimilarities of conceptual metaphors in animal idioms.This thesis has made animal idioms in English and Chinese as its research object, the conceptual metaphor theory as its theoretical framework, the qualitative analysis, description and explanation as the research methodology, and made a comparative study of conceptual metaphors in animal idioms collected. The main findings of this thesis are as follows: animal idioms can also be sorted out according to the criterion of conceptual metaphors in the conceptual metaphor theory; not all the animal idioms share the root metaphor “HUMAN BEINGS ARE ANIMALS”, there are quite a number of animal idioms belonging to the subcategory of the root metaphor “INANIMATE THINGS ARE ANIMALS”; it can also expand the scope of target domains of animal idioms, and provide a new way of people’s comprehension and mastering of animal idioms. And it also verifies the rationality of the conceptual metaphor theory. In the meanwhile, this thesis has also offered some implications in people’s studying animal idioms in English and Chinese, such as promoting the communication between English and Chinese language communities, facilitating learning and teaching of foreign languages, improving the translation between English and Chinese animal idioms. However, there are also limitations due to a lack of materials and time, which need further improvement.