A Contrastive Study Of Human Body Word “Brain” In English And Chinese: A Metaphorical Cognitive Approach

In the book Metaphors We Live by, Lakoff and Johnson claim that metaphor is not only a figure of speech, but also a mode of thinking, which triggers a metaphorical revolution. Then an increasing number of scholars study metaphor from the perspective of cognition. From the cognitive point of view, scholars at home and abroad investigate the essence, the reasons, the mechanisms, the functions and effects of metaphor, and they have gained substantial achievements. Then, with the development of metaphorical cognition, the study of human body metaphor is refined. Through analyzing various human body words, scholars can explain people's mode of cognition from a new angle. However, most scholars focus on studying the human body words such as “head”, “face”, “eye”, “tongue”, “tooth”, “heart”, “hand”, “foot” etc. Studies of the word “brain” are very few, and contrastive studies of “brain” metaphors in English and Chinese are even fewer. Like the word “head”, “brain” also belongs to the core lexicon of human body words and it is also of great value for research. Besides, with the development of English and Chinese vocabulary, many new words related to “brain” appear in recent years, but studies of these new words are rare too. Thus, adopting description and interpretation, comparison and analysis as the methodology, this thesis will take words, phrases, and idioms related to “brain” as examples, systematically analyzing the similarities and differences between the English and Chinese “brain” metaphors in metaphorical cognition. The study shows that owing to the influence of language, culture, thought and environment, there are many similarities and differences between the English and Chinese “brain” metaphors in metaphorical formation, metaphorical cognitive type and metaphorical cognitive mode. Through exploring these similarities, differences, and the reasons, English and Chinese speakers' ways of cognition will be better comprehended and it is also conductive for language learners to cognize words.In this thesis, the meanings of the English and Chinese word “brain” and the examples of “brain” metaphors come from Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary(8th edition), Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(5th edition), The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary(6th edition) and British National Corpus.This thesis includes six chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction which contains the background, objectives, methodology, significance, the related concepts of the study and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 is the literature review which introduces the research status of metaphor studies and the status of metaphorical cognitive studies of human body words at home and abroad. Chapter 3 focuses on studying the semantic processes of “brain” and making contrastive analyses of metaphorical formations of “brain” in English and Chinese. Chapter 4 makes contrastive analyses of metaphorical cognitive types of “brain” in English and Chinese. Chapter 5 makes contrastive analyses of metaphorical cognitive modes of “brain” in English and Chinese. Chapter 6 is the conclusion in which major findings, limitations of the study and suggestions for the future research will be summarized.