A Study On Conceptual Metaphor And Gender Culture In English And Chinese Proverbs

Gender culture signifies much in the study of culture and language. Belonging to the cultural category, gender not only differentiates males and females, but also manifests the power that influences males and females, which divided them into hierarchical groups in the society. However, the researches on gender culture are largely limited in sociolinguistics and pragmatics with the focused studying on the different ways in language use, phonological differences and different word choices. As to the study of gender culture, taking gender as the object from the cognitive linguistic perspective turns out to be insufficient yet. This thesis intends to interpret the gender culture characteristics reflected in the English and Chinese proverbs via examining the conceptual metaphors in the proverbs. The conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese proverbs concerning gender would be addressed in details as the recognition of gender culture, and as the manifestation of social image and status of males and females.Based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory of Lakoff, and Kovecses' idea of simple and complex conceptual metaphors, this research analyzes the simple conceptual metaphors of gender in English and Chinese proverbs, and then generalizes the more abstract complex conceptual metaphors on the basis of the simple conceptual metaphors to interpret the distinguished cultural features concerning males and females revealed through the conceptual metaphors. The research selects 83 English proverbs and 51 Chinese ones concerning gender in 7 dictionaries, and identified 152 simple conceptual metaphors from these proverbs. Then 37 complex conceptual metaphors are generalized from the simple ones, in which 13 of them focus on males and 24 on females.The result indicates that in English and Chinese proverbs, males are interpreted as HIGH, STRONG and VALUABLE, while females LOW, WEAK, CHANGEABLE and TALKATIVE. Females are at the lower status than males, and are subordinated to males. The case of females' being higher than males is restricted in "love" subject in English proverbs, which could not compete with the male dominance in the society. Females are valuable for being the possessions of males, while males are valuable for their ability to take females as possessions.This research is significant in that, in the pedagogical sense, it helps the English learners understand the cultural connotations of proverbs and enables them to know the different gender culture characters so as to use the proverbs correctly without offending others. In the cultural aspect, the clear characteristics of gender revealed in the proverbs can help cross-cultural communication. In addition, as proverbs are the historical essence of human language, this study can be the evidence for the further study of gender culture as a linguistic support.