英语专业毕业论文811.doc

an intercultural study of conceptual metaphor in english and chinese-taking love metaphor as an example1 definitions of metaphor theories of metaphor have come and gone without shedding much light on their roles in cognition and communication until recently when the study of metaphor has moved from primarily literary and philosophical territory to the realms of cognitive linguistics, and other cognitive disciplines. as more and more about human conceptual system have been learned, the essential roles played by metaphorical thought have become more evident. the idea of the abstract concepts such as love, time or the meanings of scientific observations are found to be conveyed by calling upon language and conceptions normally used in speaking and thinking about more concrete experiences.（常宗林，英汉隐喻文化学） 1.1 traditional and new definitionsin traditional rhetoric, metaphor is defined as the comparison of dissimilar things or as the transference and it names one thing in terms of another. the great philosopher aristotle mostly had the same idea. metaphor is defined in this way, “metaphor is, for most people, a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words” (g. lakoff, and m. johnson, metaphors we live by). it can express ones idea more effectively and vividly as a device. conventional metaphors are pervasive in everyday language and we are always using them without knowing them.metaphor has been extended to a larger scope again and again, especially in the recent 20 or more years. from the theory of cognitive science, we can know that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”. (lakoff, g. and johnson, m., metaphors we live by) defined in this way, metaphor is a complex phenomenon of language and thinking. that is to say, linguistic metaphor and conceptual metaphor are closely connected to each other, and the former is the instantiation of the latter, whereas the latter is super-ordinate category. as the oxford english dictionary defines, metaphor is “the figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different forms, but analogous to, what to which it is properly applicable”.1.2 metaphor study in chinathe study of metaphor in china is still in its beginning stages in contrast with “metaphor mania” abroad in recent years. from the early research on foreign languages, many articles are written on figure of speech (including metaphor). most of the articles only briefly introduce metaphor in english or simply compare metaphor in english and chinese as a figure of speech. (束定芳，隐喻学研究) in the 1990s, book comments of the important works in the metaphor study appeared in the main magazines of foreign language study. at the same time, several articles on the history of metaphor study in the west were published. the metaphor theories in the west were introduced systematically into china. in the recent years, great progress has been made in the study of metaphor. however, there are also two tasks for the contemporary metaphor study. one is doing research on languages other than english to verify the cognitive view of metaphor; the other is concerned about the universality and cultural variation of metaphor. these two tasks can only be fulfilled through a contrastive study of metaphor in cross-cultural field.（蓝纯，从认知角度看汉语和英语的空间隐喻（英文本）2 conceptual metaphor theoryin this chapter, one of the most important theories-conceptual metaphor theory will be explained with the aim to offer a better understanding of how metaphor achieves its metaphoricity. it can best illustrate the working mechanism of metaphor from cognitive perspective. in classical theories of language, metaphor is seen as a matter of language not thought. however, with the advent of cognitive science and advances in cognitive linguistics, metaphor has been demonstrated to occupy a predominant place in our thought processes and life in general. (lakoff and johnson, 1980) 2.1 conceptual metaphorslakoff and johnson also have studied the conceptual metaphors english people “live by”. in this section, we will state some aspects of conceptual metaphor theory: what is conceptual metaphor, what it is based on, and what the classification of it is and so on.lakoff and johnson claim, “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” they also claim that human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. they argue that conceptual metaphor is a system of metaphor that lies behind much of everyday language and forms everyday conceptual system, including most abstract concepts. (lakoff and johnson, 1980) at first, we can take an abstract concept argument for example to see what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity. (1) your evidence is indefensible. (2) i have never won an argument with him. (3) he shot down all of my arguments. from the examples above, we know that we do not just talk about argument in terms of war. we see the person arguing with us as our opponent. we attack his position and defend ours. if we find our position is indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new way to attack. many things we do in argument are partially structured by the concept of war. although there is no physical battle, there is only a verbal battle, but the structure of an argument-defense or attack often reflects this. according to lakoff, the similarity between argument and war is not simply a conventional linguistic strategy for talking about argument, but a mental structure to represent abstract concepts. he calls them conceptual metaphors or metaphorical concepts. in the language study, conceptual metaphor is represented in capital forms such as time is money, good is up, bad is down, etc. george lakoff and mark johnson claim that: “many aspects of our experience can not be clearly delineated in terms of naturally dimensions of our experience. this is typically the case for human emotions, abstract concepts, and mental activity. though most of these can be experienced directly, none of them can be fully comprehended on their own terms. instead, we must understand them in terms of other entities and experiences.” (g. lakoff & m. johnson.1980, metaphors we live by, p.7) as they put it, “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” it does not mean that argument is a subspecies of war, but argument is partially structured, understood, performed and talked about in terms of war. the concept is structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and consequently, the language is metaphorically structured. from the argument is war metaphor, we can see that the contemporary theory of metaphor has defined the term “metaphor” to be fundamentally conceptual rather than linguistic in nature. in order to better understand conceptual metaphor, we will make a distinction between conceptual metaphor (or metaphorical concept) and linguistic metaphor (or metaphorical expressions). conceptual metaphors (or metaphorical concepts) refer to abstract notions such as time is money, argument is war, life is a journey, etc. linguistic metaphors (or metaphorical expressions) refer to actual phrases in language that realize these abstract notions; such as you are wasting my time, your evidence is indefensible, etc. thus metaphorical expressions in language are seen to be no more than a surface manifestation of metaphorical concepts. from the above analysis, we can see that conceptual metaphor lies behind much of everyday language and structures our everyday language system, including most abstract concepts.2.2 classifications of conceptual metaphorit is said that language universals of metaphor lie in the root metaphors (i.e. conceptual metaphors). these conceptual metaphors have become the integrated parts of our conceptual systems. they have undergone long historical change and have been accepted through common practice. in the book metaphors we live by, lakoff generally classified metaphors into the following three categories.3 relations between metaphor and cultureas is mentioned in the first two chapters, metaphors allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another. this suggests that understanding takes place in terms of the whole domains of experience and not in terms of isolated concepts. such kinds of experience are a product of our interactions with the physical and cultural environment. so it is universally acknowledged that metaphor and culture are inseparable. in the following chapter, we will talk about the relationship between metaphor and culture.3.1 relationship between metaphor and culturemetaphorical thinking arises from embodied experience, which gives rise to conceptual metaphors in turn. these embodied experiences give rise to the development of an experiential gestalt which is called “image schema”, on which conceptual metaphors are based. our embodied experiences are cultural in nature. (lakoff and johnson, 1980), so is our cognition. we can not study or talk about cognition without considering our embodied interactions with the cultural world. the relation also includes the consideration that the physical world is not separate from the cultural world. that is because what we regard as meaningful in the physical world is restricted by the cultural beliefs and values. theories of conceptual systems should be inherently cultural for the cognition which happens when the body meets the world is culturally-based. so we can acknowledge that culture has a defining role in shaping embodiment and metaphorical thought. so the relationship between metaphor and culture can be described as follows: metaphor and culture interact with each other. culture plays a role in shaping metaphor and in turn, metaphor plays an important part in constituting culture.3.1.1 the influence of culture on metaphorin the past few years, some linguists believe that metaphors reflect the working of different “cultural models”, which work for individuals and collective communities in shaping what people believe, how they act, and how they speak about the world and their own experiences.image schemas arise from embodied experiences and often work as the source domains for conceptual metaphor. they have a strong cultural component, especially in terms of which aspects of embodied experiences are viewed as particularly salient and meaningful in peoples lives. as quinn (1991) pointed out, many of our embodied experiences are rooted in social-cultural contexts. image schemas is not simply given by the body, but formed out of culturally interactions. the bodily experiences that form the source domains for conceptual metaphors are complex social and cultural constructions. the embodied metaphors arise not only from the body alone, but also from its interactions, which are defined by the cultural world to a large extent. the widely-known conceptual metaphor such as anger is heated fluid in a container is shaped by cultural knowledge as well as bodily experiences (gibbs, 1997). to make this idea more clearly, imagine that you are thrown by a person when you are sitting on a park bench. you feel pain in the back. will you get angry? in what cases will you experience anger and how might you conceptualize this emotion? the fact is that you will not get angry simply as the result of the physical event of someone kicking you as a particular kind of social behavior, such as the person did it intentionally to harm you. then when you judge a person doing something intentionally to harm you, you may conceptualize this angry feeling in metaphorical terms depending on the situation and your past history. you may believe that the intentional actions put you under pressure, so you feel quite deeply with your body in such a way as to think of the event as anger is heated fluid in a container. what defines each of these situations, and your embodied reactions to them, is your cultural interpretation of the event and the motivations, or reasons for the other persons behavior towards you. cognition is embodied in cultural situations, so is the metaphor.3.1.2 metaphor as external representation of culturein the last section, we have discussed the cultural basis of metaphor. now we will talk about the reverse relationship. as is discussed earlier in this thesis, metaphor is a kind of tool arising from body-word interactions. metaphors are tools for working with experience. some elements of culture are reflected in the metaphors and these elements are represented in our mind and kept in our long-term memory. metaphor is used to enable people to better solve problems, make decisions, and perform skilled action. the embodied experience often interacts with specific social environments. so when we look at some metaphors, we can understand the specific culture where the metaphors are rooted. for instance, according to kovecses research (19910, being happy is being off the ground is a conceptual metaphor closely related to the happy is up metaphor in english. consider the following expressions: she was on cloud nine.i am six feet off the ground. we were in the clouds. but in chinese, this metaphor is not applicable. that is, in chinese, “being off the ground” is usually not mapped positively onto the concept of happy, but negatively onto the concepts of proud or complacent. two examples of this kind are as follows:他飘飘然起来。他又云里雾里了。it is clear that “being off the ground” is considered out of self-control, which is not a good thing in chinese culture.from the comparison, it is concluded that metaphor can constrain our thinking, and it is also the representation of a special culture. as another proof, we can create new metaphors relevant to the conceptual metaphors that already exist to express our ideas and thoughts. such kinds of metaphors are also representations of culture. computer users often involve in metaphorical actions such as surfing, traveling through webs, creating different windows and so on.as was revealed above, metaphor is not only grounded in physical experience but it is also constrained by cultural models. it is difficult to separate the conceptual metaphor from the cultural contexts. it is obvious that cultural models play an important part in our understanding of the world.3.2 analysis of metaphors in english and chineseas human beings have the common fundament of cognition, there are many same aspects in peoples daily life. conceptual metaphor, as the essence of reflecting objective matters, reflects humans cognitive experience. thus, there must be much commonness in conceptual metaphors of different languages. meanwhile, because different nations have different cultures, faiths and values, they view the world with different perspectives. in the following part, well analyze the “love” metaphor in both english and chinese. in order to analyze metaphors in english and chinese, we will investigate a metaphorical concept “love” through the language we use to talk about the abstract concept. “love” is one of the most general and important parts of human emotions. though love can be classified into many different kinds like: “family love”, “friendship love”, “religious love” and “love of things”, what i focus on is the love between lovers and the kind of love should be translated into chinese as “爱情”. language is often regarded as an important tool in the job of learning about the cognitive system. it is impossible to do research of emotions without the language describing it. in the last one and half decades, extensive studies have already been conducted on the function of metaphor on the conceptualization of emotions. lakoff & johnson, kovecses have done some relevant studies, and kovecses has particularly illustrated the conceptual metaphor of love. some attempts had been made to show a comparative study of conceptual metaphors of love between english and chinese and find out what similarities and differences there are. owing to the fact that some metaphorical expressions of love can only be comprehended in certain context, the data are not collected randomly. the english data are collected mainly from lakoff & johnsons and kovecses love songs, love stories, and partly from newspapers. the chinese data are collected mostly from love films, love fictions and dictionaries as well as newspapers. in the following parts, i want to make a comparative analysis from the perspective of general conceptual metaphors between english and chinese to make a clear distinction and give a rather correct interpretation.a. love is a journey. for example: (1) well just have to our separate ways. (2) look how far we have come.(3)这么多年寻寻觅觅、寻寻觅觅寻了多少爱情的路。(4)这段艰辛的爱情路途终于走到了尽头。these examples above can be explained like this: the lovers are travelers on their journeys together with their life goals seen as the destination to be arrived at. the relationship is seen as the fulfilling its purpose as long as it allows them to make progress towards their goals. the journey is not easy, and it needs the attempts of the lovers. there are impediments and crossroads where a decision has to be made about which direction to choose. and that decides whether they will keep traveling together. b. love is a war. for example:(1) he is slowly gaining ground with her.(2) he won her heart in marriage.(3)她迟早会被我俘虏的！(4)我已经攻破了她的最后防线。the metaphorical expressions above of “love” are really familiar to us. we metaphorize the concept “love” as war both in english and chinese. love is regarded as a war, and the person beloved is ofte