A Study Of The Cognitive Mechanism Of Chinese Body-part Idioms

Chinese is one of the ancient and well-developed languages in the world. It is rich invocabulary and has all varieties of set-phrases, in which idioms are the most active and widelyused type. Man beings’ categorization, conceptualization, reasoning and mentality are based onpersonal experience. And the most basic form depends on the perception of body-parts, spatialrelationship, and motion, etc. Idioms gather the essence of Chinese vocabulary, among whichbody-part idioms are a special family. They are based on human beings in form so that thehuman-centered essence can be seen through the evolution of Chinese. Moreover, their meaningsare rather associated with rhetorical meanings instead of their literal meanings of constituents.With the development and maturity of linguistics, linguistic branches have tended to beinterdisciplinary, multilevel, multi-angle and diversified. Meanwhile, the emergence of thesub-branches of cognitive linguistics offers a new perspective for the study of vocabulary,discourse and literature, etc. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, metaphor andmetonymy play an immeasurable role in the interpretation of Chinese idioms.The present study mainly focuses on Chinese body-part idioms, which are in four characters.The organs of eye, heart, hand, head, mouth, foot and ear, etc. are important body-parts that oftenmake up idioms. The thesis is based principally on the theory of the two cognitive mechanismsof metaphor and metaphors from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The qualitativeapproach is adopted in the present study, that is, the thesis is mainly theory-driven. It attempts toanalyze Chinese body-part idioms in order to find out how metaphor and metonymy work in theformation and interpretation of Chinese body-part idioms as well as to explore the characteristicsof Chinese body-part idioms in light of the theories of metaphor and metonymy so as to come upwith further understanding of Chinese idioms.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the research subject, thepurpose of the study, the methodology and data collection of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews thefindings on Chinese idioms. Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework of the study,mainly the theories of metaphor and metonymy. In Chapter Four, the main part, the cognitivemechanism of Chinese body-part idioms are analyzed by giving some examples. The last chaptersummarizes the findings of the thesis, points out the limitation of this study and presents somesuggestion for the future study.The findings of the study can be summarizes as follows: Firstly, it demonstrates thatmetaphor and metonymy are indispensable in the comprehension of Chinese body-part idioms. Secondly, the metonymic expressions, which are non-analyzable, non-arbitrary and related to theproperties of body parts, are more pervasive than metaphorical ones among Chinese body-partidioms. Thirdly, body-part idioms can convey varied human feelings by highlighting the featuresor functions of certain body parts. The study further displays that metaphor and metonymy arethe necessary and effective cognitive tools which provides a good foundation for the acquisitionof idioms. The study makes a systematic and entire analysis of Chinese body-part idioms.Moreover, its findings play an important role in the acquisition and teaching of words as well astranslation of idioms.