A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Emotion Metaphors

Metaphor is an omnipresent phenomenon of language. British rhetor Richards once said, "In our everyday conversation, there may exist one metaphor in every three sentences " (Richards 1936: 98). Therefore, human language is essentially metaphorical. The study of metaphor witnesses a long history of over 2,000 years, generating rich theories on the subject. Traditional approaches to metaphor represented by Aristotle regard metaphor as a rhetorical device functioning on the level of words and as a deviation from the ordinary mode of working of language. The pragmatic approach to metaphor takes metaphor as a special speech act; metaphor comprehension calls for a set of procedures and principles. The interactionist approach elaborated by Black understands metaphor as the interaction between two different subject systems. By specifying and highlighting the interaction between the two systems of metaphor, this theory begins to realize the cognitive value of metaphor and has paved the way for the emergence of a brand new cognitive approach.The cognitive linguistic view toward metaphor considers metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon, namely, a cognitive behavior in which human understands one field of experience in terms of another. Metaphor is composed of two parts: the source domain and target domain. Its essence is the mapping from the familiar, concrete source domain, which is closely related to human physiological bases and material activities, to the abstract target domain. The metaphorical mapping is not arbitrary, and it is rooted in our physiological structure, bodily experience and the physical world we live in. Precisely because of this cognitive commonness, cross-cultural metaphors share many similarities.According to the cognitive approach, metaphor has two main characteristics, namely, conceptual nature and systematicity. The more important of the two is the conceptual nature of metaphor, which gives rise to the key concept of conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics. Summarized from everyday language, conceptual metaphor refers to something internal, operating deep in human thoughts, such as TIME IS MONEY and LIFE IS A JOURNEY. While conventional metaphorical expressions like "Do not waste my time!" or "I'm at a crossroad in my life" are merely surface manifestations of and are governed by our underlying systematic conceptual metaphors. According to the different source domains called upon, conceptual metaphors can be classified into three categories: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. The subject of the present study, the conceptualization of emotions, adopts all the above three conceptual metaphors, with ontological metaphors ranking first. According to statistics, about 70 percent of expressions in our daily language come from conceptual metaphors. Thus studies on conceptual metaphors through linguistic expressions are really worthy of great notice.As mentioned above, the experiences of human bodies and material activities are the bases for possible metaphorical mappings. However, every experience takes place within a vast background of cultural presuppositions, which leads to the fact that metaphor is heavily in debt to cultures. And it is cultural relativity that results in a wide diversity of conceptual metaphors.Emotions, as one of the most pervasive and basic aspects of human experience, prove the cognitive universality of metaphors most prominently and thus have been among the focuses of cognitive linguistics. Emotions are virtually not vague or hard to clarify; they are conceptualized and expressed in metaphorical terms. Because of the important role metaphors play in the conceptualization of emotions, a systematic study of the conceptual organization of emotions should be conducted from the perspective of metaphors, specifying and classifying the relevant metaphorical expressions. Yet this point has not received the necessary attention it deserves. Moreover, the majority of studies on emotions have been mainly made within the language of English. In view of the above factors, the present study takes emotion metaphors as its subject and conducts a comparative research into the conceptualization of the five basic emotions—HAPPINESS, ANGER, LOVE, SADNESS and FEAR in English and Chinese, exploring the similarities and differences between them on the basis of cognitive commonness and cultural diversities.As this study shows, English and Chinese share some major conceptual metaphors in the conceptualization of the five emotions. Concerning HAPPINESS and SADNESS, both English and Chinese employ the HAPPINESS IS UP or HAPPINESS IS LIGHT concept while SADNESS IS DOWN or SADNESS IS DARKNESS; in respect of ANGER, they have ANGER IS HEAT in common; with regard to LOVE, Chinese is similar to English in depicting LOVE in terms of PLANT, HEART or WAR. These similarities can be attributed to the common human bodily experience of the two peoples. However, differences do occur between the two languages in describing the same emotions. For example, English presumes HAPPINESS IS BEING OFF THE GROUND, while Chinese regards HAPPINESS IS FLOWERS IN THE HEART. As for the central metaphor ANGER IS HEAT, English prefers the FLUID metaphor, while Chinese favors the GAS metaphor. Furthermore, when depicting emotions through the physiological effects, Chinese tends to utilize more body parts, especially internal organ terms to conceptualize these emotions. And it seems that the selection of certain body parts over others is not all random. The above differences cannot be well explained without resorting to the cultural models in which English and Chinese emotion metaphors are conditioned. And this paper attempts to illustrate the differences by referring to the Yin-Yang Theory in Chinese philosophy and the Theory of Five Elements in traditional Chinese medicine.This paper overcomes the weakness of traditional approaches in confining metaphors to the rhetorical field. Grounded on the analysis of a large amount of linguistic data from English and Chinese, it has made a rather complete and systematic study of emotion metaphors from the cognitive perspective. The present study supports and may develop the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor from the domain of emotions: abstract concepts like human emotions are largely comprehended and expressed through metaphors; emotion metaphors are rooted in bodily experience and are influenced by cultural models as well, namely, conceptual metaphors of emotions are characterized by cognitive commonness and culturaldiversity. Meanwhile, this study is also expected to provide useful information and references for cross-cultural communication.