Metaphorical Systems Of COLOR In English And Chinese:A Cognitive Exploration

With the rise of Conceptual Metaphor Theory from the 1980s,metaphor in cognitive linguistics is not merely a rhetorical device of language but holds a central status in shaping the perceived realities and structuring our conceptual systems.Conceptual metaphors are coded in the corresponding linguistic expressions and grounded in the bodily and cultural experiences.Under the theoretical framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,this thesis studies the basic color terms and investigates the COLOR metaphorical systems in English and Chinese from the cognitive perspective.It aims to answer the questions with regard to how the source domain COLOR maps onto the target domains and how experiential and cultural bases motivate the COLOR metaphorical mappings in English and Chinese.The language data in this thesis are mainly from English and Chinese dictionaries and corpora.It is proposed that the source domain COLOR systematically maps onto eight central target domains,that is,the domains of PHYSICALITY,EMOTION,IDENTITY,PERSONALITY,MORALITY,PERMISSION,PROHIBITION and WARNING.The mappings form eight central complex metaphors,some of which are composed of several primary metaphors,the ones emerging directly from correlations in experience.Moreover,these COLOR metaphorical mappings reflect three abstract conceptual metaphors,that is,REPRESENTATION OF PERSON'S STATES IS PERCEPTION OF COLOR,JUDGEMENT OF PERSON'S QUALITIES IS PERCEPTION OF COLOR and MANIPULATION OF PERSON'S BEHAVIORS IS PERCEPTION OF COLOR.The author argues that COLOR metaphors in this study are correlation-based metaphors that derive from correlations or co-occurrences in experience rather than similarities or resemblances between the source domain and target domain.Furthermore,the COLOR metaphors exist in a systematic network in forms of two kinds of relationships.One is compositional relationship where the complex COLOR metaphors are composed of primary metaphors,and this thesis applies a decompositional approach that breaks the central complex COLOR metaphors into primary ones.The other is specific-abstract relationship where the COLOR metaphors have different level of schematicity,as SADNESS IS COLOR,EMOTION IS COLOR,and REPRESENTATION OF PERSON'S STATES IS PERCEPTION OF COLOR being metaphors from the more specific level to the more abstract and general level.It is found that the systematicity of COLOR metaphors is reflected in three aspects.Firstly,each metaphorical mapping from one specific basic color term to a target is instantiated by a collection of similar expressions.Secondly,several different color terms can map onto the same target,and the same color term will map onto different target domains in different situations.Thirdly,the whole COLOR metaphorical mappings are organized in a correlated and interactive way.In the COLOR metaphorical mappings,there are both similarities and differences between English and Chinese.On the one hand,on account of the similar bodily experience,English and Chinese share the color metaphoric expressions with similar meanings.On the other hand,there are also culture-specific metaphorical mappings in both English and Chinese due to the different cultural experiences and social traditions.