A Corpus-based Contrastive Study On Animal Metaphors In English And Chinese A Case Study Of Cat And Dog Expressions

Recent years have seen the fruitful results achieved as well as the problems unsolved in the study of animal metaphors.This paper reports on a contrastive study that investigates,within the framework of The Great Chain Metaphor Theory and Revised Hsieh's(2006)Model,the metaphorical mappings of animal expressions in English and Chinese from three aspects,namely the origins of animal metaphors,the elements mapped and the process from Source Domain to Target Domain.A Corpus will be built in EXCEL sheets based on 180 cat and dog metaphors gathered from dictionaries of different types in both languages.Special attention will be paid to five main aspects of information,including metaphorical meaning of the expression,sources of the expression,semantic molecules,pragmatic category(e.g.,terms of insult),and target domain of the expression.The sources are categorized into four types: observed animal traits,culture-bound,language-specific,and arbitrary sources.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)For an animal metaphor,the elements mapped have to do with the relative position of its target compared with ANIMAL in The Great Chain,with the lower ones being associated with animal's appearance features.As for the higher one(exactly HUMAN),the distributions of sources are basically the same in both languages,with observed animal traits the largest,followed by culture-bound,language-specific,and arbitrary sources.More importantly,culture-bound sources largely depend on animal behaviors.Such similarities are rooted in the fact that animal metaphors,as the linguistic representations of our embodied experiences,reflect the general ways animals are conceptualized.(2)The attitudes towards a certain animal and the target it metaphorically refers to have a bearing on the location of its target in The Great Chain.For metaphors with a target domain lower than ANIMAL in the Chain,no attitudes or evaluations are attached.But when it comes to HUMANS ARE ANIMALS,there are two opposing views concerning dog metaphors:(i)animal expressions(including dog ones)highlight ‘objectionable' traits and(ii)the understandings of dogs are the result of cultural differences.Two reasons are to blame for the disagreement.Most of HUMANS ARE ANIMALS metaphors show the negative side of animals,but in different degrees.DOG in English seems more neutral compared with its Chinese counterpart.Moreover,our conceptualizations of DOG are reflected in current vocabulary,while these expressions emerge in different periods.The positive dog expressions in Chinese are almost obsolete,which indicates a pejorative change.Though recently Chinese attitudes towards dogs have been changing neutrally,if not positively.(3)The choice of salient features and the importance attached to that feature vary in different cultures,but individual construal also plays a part in the conceptualizations of animals.The former statement is shown by the preferences of semantic molecules and the distribution of Distinct Metaphors,Different Metaphors and Identical Metaphors,while the latter accounts for the existence of conflicting expressions within a language.(4)The holistic thought of Chinese and analytical thought of English find their representations in the formation of animal expressions.Chinese favor the usage of animal names with other subjects,but in most of English expressions only one animal name appears.A single animal name represents the whole animal family in most of Chinese cases,while English speakers tend to differentiate every subject of the family.The present paper is an exercise following the trend of ‘social turn' in cognitive linguistics by considering cultural factors in cognitive linguistic research,which helps to enhance our understanding of the ways in which language,conceptualization and culture interact with each other.Additionally,the details of metaphor origins and mappings provide a panoramic view of animals or even the world.Finally,it benefits second language learners and translators at least in avoiding making false assumptions about the meanings of animal metaphors.