A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Conceptual Metaphors Involving "Water"

Traditional metaphor theories regard metaphor as a figure of speech, as more or less an ornamental device which is related to poetry and rhetoric. The establishment of conceptual metaphor theory in Metaphors We Live By co-edited by cognitive semanticists Lakoff and Johnson in the1980s symbolizes the emancipation from the bondage of traditional literature-and-rhetoric based metaphorical theories to the entry of evolutionary cognitive science. According to conceptual metaphor theory, metaphor is not merely as a matter of language but an instrument of thinking. Metaphor is defined as a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. And the essence of metaphor is to understand and conceptualize abstract and unfamiliar things in terms of concrete and familiar things.Under the framework of cognitive linguistics and from the perspective of embodied philosophy and cognitive cultural model, this thesis makes use of the conceptual metaphor theory to make a contrastive study of the conceptual metaphors involving "water" in Chinese and English (water as the source domain), with the aim to answer the following three questions:(1) What conceptual metaphors of "water " can be extracted and abstracted in English and Chinese?(2) What are the similar or different conceptual metaphors involving "water" in the two languages?(3) What underlying cognitive and cultural causes may account for the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors involving "water" in English and Chinese?The metaphorical expressions of "water" for this study are mainly drawn from the general corpora including COCA (the Corpus of Contemporary American English), BNC (British National Corpus) and the Chinese corpus CCL(the Center of Chinese Linguistics),with some linguistic data obtained from internet and newspapers.All together twenty "water" metaphors in terms of different physical attributes and functions of water are extracted in this thesis, among which there are thirteen similar "water" metaphors in both languages, including TRAFFIC IS WATER, TIME IS WATER, IDEA IS WATER, MONEY IS WATER, FUTILITY IS WATER, PAST EVENT IS WATER, ATTITUDE IS WATER, ORDINARY THING IS WATER,UNKNOWN THING IS WATER, DIFFICULTY IS WATER, LEVEL OF EXCELLENCE IS WATER,FAKE ELEMENT IS WATER,POWER IS WATER. Meanwhile, six peculiar "water" metaphors are found only in Chinese, which are MENTAL STATE IS WATER, CONDITION IS WATER, WOMAN IS WATER, VIRTUE IS WATER, SORROW IS WATER, LOVE IS WATER. However, only one "water" metaphor appears in English but not in Chinese, namely, OPINION IS WATER. It is shown that the metaphorical mappings of "water" in both English and Chinese are characterized by both similarities and differences, with more similarities than differences. The metaphorical scope of water primarily covers such conceptual domains as ideology, social behavior, social relationship and so on. Based on the embodied philosophy, the author analyzes the causes of the similarities of English and Chinese "water" metaphors. It is suggested that similar "water" metaphors in the two languages are the result of the general cognition and conceptualization of water based on the bodily experience to it in human’s daily life. Different cultural models including different geographical environment, world outlook, interpersonal relationship, and outlook on time between English and Chinese people contribute to the causes for the different conceptual metaphors of "water" in English and Chinese.This study can cast light on the significance of cross-lingual and cross-cultural study of conceptual metaphors. The contrastive study of conceptual metaphors involving "water" in English and Chinese will help us understand how English and Chinese people use the concrete domain of water to conceptualize abstract domains and gain a further insight into the relationship among language, human’s thinking modes and cultural models. The current study is also of great practical significance in language teaching to improve learner’s cross-cultural communicative competence and metaphorical competence. It also provides inspirations for English-Chinese translating and dictionary compiling.