| Metaphor is traditionally viewed as a kind of figures of speech, that is, a linguistic phenomenon. It is primarily decorative and ornamental in nature. It is not necessary; it is just nice. However, in the past few decades, the study about metaphor shows that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words. Most important, metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but also in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. We use language to describe our thought, action, and language itself. Therefore, it is the best way to study the nature of metaphor in language. Although there have been many different studies about metaphor in English, other languages seldom set foot in this area. Especially, in Chinese, the study about metaphor is still restricted to its linguistic characteristics. So it is quite constructive and meaningful to study the nature of metaphor from the perspective of Chinese, so as to help place the theory into a wider cross-cultural perspective. Here, emotion will be focused when talking about metaphor. It is because emotion is one of the most central and pervasive aspects of human experience. Since cognition can influence and be influenced by emotions, the study of human emotion constitutes the essential components in our probe into human cognition. For humans, anger and happiness remain the most important emotions and they are sharply different. So these two emotions are chosen hoping that the nature of emotion metaphors will be understood, consequently, getting some natures of metaphors. And a comparative study of emotion metaphor is conducted in English and Chinese aiming at placing the theory of metaphor on a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural basis. Through the observation of emotion metaphors and reference of the related theoryof them, we find out that both English and Chinese share the same conceptual metaphor anger is heat. English has selected fire and fluid metaphors; Chinese chooses fire and gas for the same purpose. These two languages also follow the same metonymic principle in talking about anger by describing the physiological effects of the emotion. Also, Chinese tends to use more body-part terms, especially internal organs, than English in its metaphors and metonymies of anger. In English, there are three major conceptual metaphors for the notion of happiness: happiness is up; being happy is being off the ground; happiness is a fluid in a container. While in Chinese, happiness is up matches to that of English, and being happy is being off the ground is not completely same as that of English and there isanother type of happiness metaphor - happiness is light. Similarly, Chinese tends to use more body parts when describing happiness. And happiness is also referred to as a fluid in a container. It has to be noted that being happy is being off the ground does not seem to be applicable in Chinese. The reason for this difference seems to be that in Chinese, this upward orientation has its upper limit. From above, it is assumed that in English and Chinese, the presentation of emotion metaphors is to a large degree similar. This is based on the similar human experience. People always try to use the concrete terms to explain or describe the more abstract terms. So it is quite reasonable that the physiological effects of an emotion stand for this emotion. On the other hand, in describing these emotions, Chinese and English have some differences. For example, English uses fire to describe anger and Chinese uses qi to describe it. This is largely determined by the different cultural models. Chinese is long influenced by the Taoism - yin-yang and five elements of Chinese philosophy and medicine are the essence of this theory. They are part of the shared understanding of the Chinese culture and constitute part of Chinese cultural models. So they have shaped the selection of metaphors in Chinese language in a significant way. Conv... |
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