A Contrastive Analysis Of Animal Metaphors In Chinese And English Idioms From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

As one kind of metaphors, animal metaphors are very common in various linguistic forms, such as poems, idioms, euphemisms and even advertisements. In addition, animal metaphors have become the specific linguistic forms, which are studied by many domestic and foreign scholars.During the process of contrast between Chinese and English idioms, it is easy to find out that there are similarities and differences in the cognitive meanings of these frequently used animal metaphors. The former studies both at home and abroad are merely from the cultural perspective which cannot explore the internal cognitive mechanism of animal metaphors. From the cognitive perspective, this thesis mainly conducts a contrastive analysis of the meaning constructions of animal metaphors between Chinese idioms and English idioms within the framework of Fauconnier & Turner’s Conceptual Integration Theory and the Great Chain of Being Metaphor. Then it explores the similarities and differences of animal metaphors between two languages through ICM (Idealized Cognitive Model) analysis. The thesis will attempt to answer three questions:(1) What are the meaning constructions and working mechanisms of animal metaphors in idioms? (2) To what extent are the animal metaphors in Chinese idioms different from or similar to their English equivalents? (3) What cause the similarities and differences of animal metaphors between Chinese idioms and English idioms? Based on the HUMANS ARE ANIMALS metaphor, this thesis chooses six sub metaphors which are HUMANS ARE MAMMALS (DOGS), HUMANS ARE RODENTS (RATS), HUMANS ARE REPTILES (SNAKES), HUMANS ARE INSECTS (WORMS), HUMANS ARE AQUATIC ANIMALS (FISH) and HUMANS ARE BIRDS metaphors. Then it chooses 56 Chinese idioms and 46 English idioms of these six sub metaphors from Chinese and English authoritative dictionaries of idioms respectively as data. Through the contrastive analysis of data, conclusions are made as following:(1) Animal metaphors are very pervasive in daily language. Its meaning constructions can be illustrated with the conceptual integration mechanism and can be explained by the conceptual integration network. (2) There are similarities of animal metaphors between Chinese idioms and English idioms, which mainly embodied in the phenomenon that the meanings of animal metaphors in idioms are mostly derogatory when describing humans. This can be attributed to the hierarchy in the Great Chain of Being Theory that humans are superior to animals. (3) There are considerable differences of animal idioms between them. When describing animals, the same kind of animal has different metaphorical meanings in different languages. Considering these results, learners who study the language of English and Chinese should pay more attention to animal metaphors; know the differences between two languages and the cultural models that result in the differences. Only by doing these will learners master the languages better and translate the text between two languages accurately.