A Cognitive Study On Sadness Metaphors In English And Chinese Cultures

Metaphor has been studied from various perspectives. Different from thetraditional rhetorical perspective, which views metaphor as a rhetorical instrument,Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive approach has provided new insights into metaphor.Study of metaphor is no longer limited to linguistic level, and human cognition andconceptualization of the world have been introduced and integrated. Numerousresearches have been conducted and extended to specific categories of metaphors,such as spatial metaphors and sadness metaphors. However, many fields in study ofmetaphors against different cultural backgrounds still lie unexplored.This thesis, based on Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive approach to metaphor, triesto combine the study of culture into the analysis of sadness metaphors. It comparessadness metaphors in Chinese and English cultures and explores cultural influences onmetaphorical expressions in the two languages and cognition of the two people.