A Cultural Comparison Of Female Metaphors In William Wordsworth's And Xu Zhimo's Poems

As language is a part of culture, the cross-cultural study of metaphor is one of the most interesting fields to linguistic researchers. Metaphors used in linguistics and literature works, such as poems, have a powerful influence on the framing of cognitive thinking, and these metaphors have guided the history of language development for several millennia. They also influence Chinese and English writing.This thesis is designed to show that modern English and the Chinese language have a large number of metaphors which reflect different types of culture. The authorwill make a comparative study of the figures of female in the metaphoric realm, and at the same time, from the cultural perspective to explain the universality and variation in metaphor.The present paper consists of seven parts:Introduction depicts the main reasons to conduct the study, the general background where the study sets and the overview of the whole thesis.Chapter One gives the literature review related to the present study. Some main branches of metaphor study and their leading characters are listed and further more, the present and future research trends are briefly discussed by the author.Chapter Two lays out the theoretical foundations of the study and the important steps of metaphor research are discussed one by one, including some famous metaphor theories that have been studied before and are being studied right now.Chapter Three focuses on the definition and classification of both metaphor and culture in many ways. Then, the relations between the two concepts will be discussed and further illustrated in two aspects—cultural variation and universality.Chapter Four begins with the introductions of the two poets whom the author will have a further discussion on their works and life backgrounds. Moreover, the female metaphors will be listed out respectively and be put into different categories according to their special characteristics.Chapter Five explores the fundamental reasons for the two poets' common and various female metaphors from the cultural perspective, including common experiences, different religions, physical environment, traditional customs, etc. Conclusion summarizes the function of metaphors in both Chinese and English languages and how they are related to culture and how they influences poem writing and modern literature.This thesis intends to provide some evidence for contemporary cognitive theoryof metaphor from two poets—English poet William Wordsworth and Chinese poets Xu Zhimo in order to analyze the use of metaphor in the cultural context. Also, it is expected from this thesis that cultural universality and variation will affect the use of metaphor, which means that we don't stay on the level of only the description of metaphors, but more importantly, we move on to the next stage of the explanation of metaphors.