A Comparative Study On Metaphor Of Flower Imagery In English And Chinese Poetry

With the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s prominent work Metaphors We Live By, the cognitive function of metaphor has been gradually recognized, attracting wide attention among scholars home and abroad. Metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cognitive phenomenon, which now has become the consensus among scholars in different fields. The contemporary theory of metaphor is progressive in many aspects but the contrastive studies of metaphor focus on emotion metaphor, color metaphor, body metaphor, space metaphor based on conceptual metaphor theory. Few touched upon the comparative studies on metaphors of flower images which are also an important and meaningful part of metaphor study.Working within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, this thesis takes flower images chosen from600Chinese poems and300English poems as the research data in order to make a systematical analysis of conceptual mappings of flower metaphors and summarize the similarities and differences of conceptual metaphors of flower images in English and Chinese poems.It has been found that metaphors of flower images are pervasive in English and Chinese poems. Metaphors of flower image have flower images as the source domain and human or non-human things as the target domain. The appearances, features and living requirements of flowers are projected onto human or non-human things, forming the cross-domain mappings of metaphors of flower images. Besides, there are many similar metaphors in English and Chinese poems, such as Beauty is Flower; Love is Flower; Virtue is Flower; Life and Youth is Flower, etc. Cognitive universality can account for the similarities. But there are still some unique metaphorical expressions, such as Snow is Flower in Chinese and Sweetness, Peace and Tranquility is flower in English and so on. The diversities confirm that metaphor bears rich cultural characteristics and cultural relativity brings about different metaphorical concepts. Findings of the thesis show that universalities and diversities exist in metaphor using between English and Chinese which support conceptual metaphor theory in terms of poetry. On the one hand, it will enhance a good understanding of flower images in poetry and promote a new understanding and appreciation for poetry from the cognitive perspective. On the other hand, it is good for English language learners to understand the semantic extension of flower images, and deepens the understanding of metaphor study. Besides, it will make up for the previous contrastive studies on metaphor.