A Comtrastive Study Of English And Chinese Animal Metaphor: A Cognitive And Cultural Perspective

During the past two decades, cognitive science has seriously challenged the fundamental assumption that we cognize the external reality as it really is and our understanding of the world is literal, directly corresponding to an external reality. From a cognitive perspective, especially in the conceptual metaphor theory proposed by Lakoff & Johnson, our understanding of the world is experiential, and the categories of our everyday thought are largely metaphorical and imaginative and our everyday reasoning involves metaphorical inferences. The cognitive studies in language and culture have become a focal issue, in which the theory of cognitive science influences the viewpoint of most of the scholars.Human language is full of metaphors. Lakoff & Johnson call them conceptual metaphor, among which animal metaphor is an important category. The mechanism of animal metaphor is based on the Cross-domain Mapping proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and the Great Chain Metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Tuner (1989), by which we understand human beings in terms of animals, and vice versa. Thus animal metaphor allows the mapping of generic information from source domain to a specific instantiation in target domain.This thesis makes a contrastive study of animal metaphors in English and Chinese from a cognitive and cultural perspective. Animal metaphors in the two languages are placed together to find out the cognitive commonality and cultural variation. The instrument adopted in the study for collecting data is several authoritative dictionaries in both English and Chinese, which have a great coverage of meanings and usages. By a detailed description and a deep analysis of the metaphorical meanings elicited in the dictionaries, similarities and differences can be found.This thesis mainly focuses on three aspects. First, how are the university and systematicity in animal metaphors embodied in two languages of different origins and two cultures? Second, besides universality and systematicity, what other cognitive commonalties can be found both in English and Chinese? Third, where is animal metaphor variation most likely to occur? What are the reasons?Based on the analysis of the animal metaphor in English and Chinese, it is concluded that, on the one hand, at the generic level, there are cognitive commonalities in English and Chinese. First, the animal terms with metaphorical meaning are indeed universal and systematic in both languages. Animal metaphors can be systemically mapped onto human being itself and other social domains. Second, the author has found that some kind of animal conceptual metaphor may be less common in a language though it is very salient in another one, i.e. the degree of prominence varies. Third, animal metaphor provides evidences for the so-called experientialism (a synthesis of subjectivism and objectivism) proposed by Lakoff and Johnson in their conceptual metaphor theory. Fourth, Anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism and sexism are also embodied in animal metaphors. On the other hand, when the specific contents are taken into consideration, we find that cultural variation widely exists in both English and Chinese. The differences come from several aspects including: differential natural environments and differential social experience, different traditional cultural systems, differential cognitive preference, as well as different linguistic systems. All of these physical, social and psychological factors, together with the linguistic factors contribute to the animal metaphor variations across cultures.Although there are some limitations in this analysis of animal metaphors, the contrastive study from a cognitive and cultural aspect still has its theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, it provides abundant evidences for the study of the commonalities and identification in English and Chinese animal metaphors and enriches the theory of conceptual metaphor. Practically, on the one hand, it helps English learners better understand the mechanism of animal metaphor; on the other hand, it enhances learners'awareness of cross cultural communication.