A Corpus-based Comparative Study On The Metaphorical Meaning Of English And Chinese Color Terms

Meaning extension is one form of semantic changes.Cognitive semantic linguists apply the conceptual metaphor into the semantic field and hold that conceptual metaphor is one important mechanism for meaning extension.As basic color terms have a close relationship with human cognition,it has been one of the hotspots.The basic color terms are endowed with more and more metaphorical senses as our society develops.The former researchers mainly focus on the category and cross-cultural meaning differences of color terms,very few of them pay due attention to the metaphorical nature of color terms.The thesis is a study on metaphorical meaning extension of basic color terms based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory.It tries to explore the cognitive mechanism of the metaphorical meaning extension.The study aims to answer the following questions by applying the corpus approach:1)What are the metaphorical senses of “black”,“white” and “red” in English and Chinese?2)What are the conceptual metaphors that cause the metaphorical senses of “black”,“white” and “red” in English and Chinese?3)What are the similarities and differences of the conceptual metaphors of “black”,“white” and “red” in English and Chinese?Firstly,500 concordance lines of “black”,“white” and “red” in English and Chinese are selected randomly from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the Modern Chinese Corpus of National Language Committee.Then the Metaphor Identification Procedure and the dictionaries are used to define the literal and the metaphorical meaning of basic color terms in English and Chinese.Meantime,Antconc software is used to count the frequency of the metaphorical meaning of the color terms.Secondly,the collocations of basic color terms in the concordance lines from Antconc software and the mapping principle of conceptual metaphors are used to define the target domains of the conceptual metaphors of basic color terms.The conceptual metaphors ofthe basic color terms are classified according to the target domains.Thirdly,the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors between English basic color terms and Chinese basic color terms are found and the causes of them are analyzed.The findings of the study are in the following aspects:1)There are similar and different metaphorical senses of the basic color terms“black”,“white” and “red” in English and Chinese,and the different metaphorical senses are more common.2)The conceptual metaphors of “black” in English and Chinese are: the conceptual metaphor of “black” in English is “BADNESS IS BLACK”.The conceptual metaphors of “black” in Chinese are “DARKNESS IS BLACK” and “BADNESS IS BLACK”.3)The conceptual metaphors of “white” in English are “GOODNESS IS WHITE”and “EMOTION IS WHITE”.The conceptual metaphors of “white” in Chinese are“NOTHING IS WHITE”,“EMOTION IS WHITE”,and “CLEARNESS IS WHITE”.4)The conceptual metaphors of “red” in English are “EMOTION IS RED”,“COMMUNISM IS RED” and “DEFICIT IS RED”.While the conceptual metaphors of“red” in Chinese are “EMOTION IS RED”,“GOOD STATE IS RED”,“COMMUNISM IS RED” and “BONUS IS RED”.5)Comparing the conceptual metaphors of the basic color terms,there are some similarities and differences.The same bodily experience is attributable to the similarities and culture models are attributable to the differences.Comparing the metaphorical senses and conceptual metaphors of basic color terms,it is shown that conceptual metaphor plays a critical role in meaning extension.Theoretically,the study proves that the Conceptual Metaphor Theory has a strong explanatory power on meaning extension.Practically,the study will have a suggestive significance for the second language learners to acquire more lexical senses by improving their conceptual metaphor awareness.Moreover,it will be beneficial for dictionary compilation and translation.