A Study Of Corruption Conceptual Metaphor In English And Chinese

Metaphor has been studied as a figure of speech ever since about two thousandyears ago, while the last thirty years have seen an explosive development of thecognitive study of conceptual metaphor which is regarded as a way of thinking and animportant method to understand the world.Nowadays, corruption is a hot topic in China and even in the world, while littleconceptual metaphor study was conducted on CORRUPTION metaphor. Previousconceptual metaphor studies focus on basic emotions such as anger, happiness andlove, while less discussed the non-emotional concept of CORRUPTION. TheCORRUPTION metaphor study can exemplify and develop conceptual metaphortheory. This thesis aims to explore the themes of corruption metaphors and to presenta clear picture of the interactions of body, mind and culture in the conceptualizationsof corruption in different cultures. It addresses the following research questions:1. What themes can be included into conventional conceptual metaphors ofcorruption in English and Chinese?2. Which of those themes exist both in English and Chinese and which themesare cultural specific?3. What cultural motivations underlie corruption metaphors in English andChinese?The present research studies the similarities and differences of540corruptionmetaphorical expressions in English and2181corruption metaphorical expressions inChinese by analyzing the data collected from internet, papers, magazines and corpus.It is found that there are fourteen themes of corruption metaphors exist inconventional expression: CORRUPTION IS A WAR, CORRUPTION IS ANABHORRENT THING, CORRUPTION IS AN EXPANDED PHENOMENON,CORRUPTION IS A LIVING ORGANISM, CORRUPTION IS A PHYSICALFORCE, CORRUPTION IS AN ILLNESS, CORRUPTION IS A NATURAL FORCE,CORRUPTION IS AN DANGEROUS OBJECT, CORRUPTION IS ANIMPLEMENT, CORRUPTION IS AN OBJECT WITH SPATIAL ORIENTATION, CORRUPTION IS AN ODOROUS OBJECT, CORRUPTION IS AN ATTRACTIVEOBJECT, CORRUPTION IS A JOURNEY and CORRUPTION IS EATING. In thesethemes, the similar corruption metaphors both in English and Chinese are “A WAR”,“AN ABHORRENT THING”,“AN EXPANDED PHENOMENON”,“A LIVINGORGANISM”,“A PHYSICAL FORCE”,“AN ILLNESS”,“A NATURAL FORCE”,“A DANGEROUS OBJECT” and “AN IMPLEMENT”. These similarities show usthat conceptual metaphors of corruption in both English and Chinese are primarilyrooted in common human bodily and life experiences. However, there are also severalmetaphors of corruption which are English and Chinese specific. In English, we canfind the specific metaphors of “AN OBJECT WITH SPATIAL ORIENTATION”,“AN ODOROUS OBJECT” and “AN ATTRACTIVE OBJECT”, while in Chinese,there is corruption metaphor of “A JOURNEY” and “EATING”. This research resultshows that the conceptual metaphors of corruption are affected by different cultures,especially religion and historical background. The finding is that collectivism,individualism, and humanity views in Chinese and English are the culturalmotivations which are leading to different conceptual metaphors of corruption.With the help of corpus-based analysis, this thesis studies examples ofconceptual metaphors of corruption and its findings support the contemporarymetaphor theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, i.e. metaphor is pervasive inlanguage and it plays an important role in understanding abstract objects and theobjective world. To some extent, this study also sheds light on translation research,cross-cultural studies and rhetoric teaching.