A Comparative Study Of Chinese Lian/mian And English Face From The Perspective Of Cognitive Approach

Ancient people perceived the world based on their empirical experience,especially the experience which is related to human body itself.Face,as an instinctive component of head,is an important part of human body,which facilitates the generation of other conceptualizations based on face.However,the other conceptualizations of face are embodied in the lexical meaning extension of the word itself.Previous studies on the meanings of face mainly are conducted from a diachronic perspective or a certain synchronic perspective,which are within traditional semantics and belong to a comparative study of its social functions.Later,a Chinese scholar Ning Yu(2003)firstly conducts a comparative study between Chinese lian/mian and English face from a cognitive perspective by using two conceptual tools metonymy and metaphor.Metonymy and metaphor used to be treated as two figures of speech,while in the 1980 s,in Lakoff and Johnson's study(1980)and later research conducted by more cognitive linguists,these two rhetorical devices are regarded as two conceptual tools which are pervasive in people in everyday life,not just in language use but also in the process of thinking and action.After this,many Chinese scholars provide more specific examples of Chinese and English face in real life language to show metaphorical face and metonymical face in Chinese and English.However,they all neglect a more complex situation where two conceptual tools interactively work on Chinese and English face.According to Goosens(1990),he thinks that there are metaphtonymies which are mainly reflected in metaphor from metonymy and metonymy within metaphor these two types.Furthermore,previous studies call for a comprehensive exploration of the causes which lead to the similarities and differences of the conceptualizations of Chinese lian/mian and English face.Proposed by Palmer(1996)and developed by Sharifian(2011,2015,2017),Cultural Linguistics aim for a systematical theory to deal with the relationship among language,culture and cognition,which will be helpful to analyze those different cognitive cultures related to Chinese lian/mian and English face.To sum up,this thesis tends to answer the following questions:(1)What are the metaphors,metonymies or metaphtonymies in Chinese lian/mian and English face?(2)What are the similarities and differences between Chinese lian/mian and English face?(3)What are the causes of the similarities and differences between Chinese lian/mian and English face?Based on dictionary-based approach,corpus-based approach,introspective approach and qualitative approach to the comparative study of Chinese lian/mian and English face,the author has obtained following major findings:Firstly,conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor exert influence on human cognition not only separately but also interactively.Secondly,both Chinese lian/mian and English face can be metonymically conceptualized to indicate the physical condition,emotion,attitude and character,and to replace head and body or a certain makeup on face,and to be verbalized;both of them can be metaphorically perceived to refer to one side of a tree-dimensional objects or to be regarded as good reputation and prestige in society.Thirdly,the differences between the conceptualizations of Chinese lian/mian and English face are due to Chinese unique cultures,Traditional Chinese Medical Science and Peking Opera.Furthermore,oriental collectivism and western individualism also exert influence on English and Chinese people's cognition.