The Metaphorical And Metonymic Study Of Nose In Chinese And English: A Contrastive Way

This is a Contrastive study of metaphorical and metonymic expressions containing body part term nose in Chinese and English. Metaphor is the systematic structure mapping from different domains while metonymy takes place within the same domain. They are different; however, they often work together in complicated interaction and combination. It is manifested that metonymy is more fundamental in projecting the mapping between the source to the target. In this thesis metaphor and metonymy are combined together to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis of nose in both English and Chinese languages.This thesis adopts the introspective analysis based on the examples selected from the databases to try to illustrate the following points: NOSE FOR EMOTIONS, NOSE FOR MIND, NOSE FOR BODY, NOSE FOR OBJECT and the special metonymic use of nose in English NOSE FOR ACTION and NOSE INVOLVED IN ACTION FOR ACTION.It is proved that Chinese and English share the same conceptual metaphors and metonymies, however they also bear the differences most of the time. In English the meanings of nose could go through conceptual metonymy NOSE FOR ACTION and NOSE INVOLVED IN ACTION FOR ACTION concerning the nose involved its main function. Whether similar or different, it is shown that all these expressions have an experiential grounding in our common bodily experiences with the nose.This study provides further enlightenment to the researches upon this area and if possible, an efficient guide to the second language teaching and learning. Also it further deepens the understanding between the English and Chinese cultures.