A Study On The Misinterpretation Of Metaphors In Chinese-English Intercultural Communication

In intercultural communications, the participants may misinterpret each other due to their differences in mother tongues, the modes of thinking, values, beliefs, lexical connotation, and many other aspects.It is generally recognized that language comes from culture and reflects culture. Language and culture are inseparable. To learn a language is to learn the culture it is located in. Otherwise, cultural factors may become obstacles to effective communications. Metaphor, as a carrier of culture, occurs in intercultural communication frequently. The participants may misinterpret the metaphors spoken by the other person because they have difficulty in understanding the cultural connotation of the metaphors. Therefore, failures caused by misinterpretation of metaphors are commonly seen in intercultural communications.Metaphor has become a heatedly discussed topic of cognitive linguistics. Among numerous achievements in research, the"Conceptual Metaphor Theory"put forward by George Lakoff has been attracting the most attention. The theory claims that metaphor is the basis of human's cognition, thought, experience, speech and behavior. It is the basic means by which we live. Conceptual metaphor can be understood as a cognitive process in which people understand and experience one kind of conceptual entity through another kind. The two entities belong to two different cognitive domains. Metaphorical language is a surface manifestation of metaphorical thinking.A lot of academic achievements have been made on conceptual metaphor, as well as the relationship between metaphor and culture. The study on intercultural communication also attracts more and more attention both at home and abroad. However, only few scholars have studied the causes of misinterpretation of metaphors in intercultural communication. This is one of the highlights of this thesis.On the basis of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and theories of other scholars like Kovecses, the author studies both Chinese and English metaphors in intercultural communication. This paper attempts to find out as many as the possible factors that cause misinterpretation of metaphors in Chinese-English intercultural communication.By exemplification, the author finds that the differences between the metaphors in Chinese and English are mainly caused by the differences of the cultures, in which the same source domain may be mapped onto different target domains or different sources may be mapped onto the same target domain. The differences are mainly caused by the cultural factors, including natural and physical environments, customs, habits, religious beliefs, cultural values, and socio-historical backgrounds and so on.Through this study, the author attempts to alert the participants in intercultural communications to pay more attention to the metaphors and their cultural backgrounds. Only when the communicators are aware of the variations between the two cultures can they interpret the metaphors appropriately and conduct effective intercultural communications.