Cognitive Analysis Of "Hand" Metaphors

Form the very ancient time till now; the studies of metaphor have never been underestimated. The trend of developing metaphor into "metaphormana" in the world is more and more obvious, in that the studies of metaphor have covered many fields, especially in recent years. The theories expressed on the nature, mechanism and functions of metaphor are abundance and variety.Among them, my thesis is mainly based on Lakoff's Idealized Cognitive Models, Johnson's Image Schemas and my supervisor, professor Qi's Cognitive Resemblance Principle and the "hand" corpora concerning both Chinese and English expressions.The ultimate goals of my thesis are:1) To find out the mechanism of metaphorical meaning of "hand" expressions from literal meaning to metaphorical meanings.2) To make a comparison under the different cultures on the basis of "hand" metaphors.3) To testify the theory, Cognitive Resemblance Principle, proposed by Professor Qi.