A Comparative Analysis Of The Figurative Usage Of Animal Words In Chinese And Spanish

During the 21st century, teaching Chinese as a foreign language has had a rapid development in our country, which started towards English-speaking countries and extended to countries with multiple languages such as Spanish, Russian, French, German, Arabic, etc. Due to the difference between the culture of these languages and that of English, the current Chinese textbooks, reference books and teaching modes facing English-speaking countries can’t be well adapted to the multilingual teaching. Many students from these non-English speaking counties are short of the understanding of Chinese culture, so that they are vulnerable to the impact of the negative transfer of their mother tongues in learning the cultural meaning of Chinese vocabulary. Therefore, it is necessary and significant to study and develop an exclusive Chinese international teaching method for a specific language.Based on the current Chinese international teaching mode, this article takes Spanish as an example. By comparing the figurative usages of animal words in Chinese and Spanish and carrying out an survey, the necessity and feasibility of exclusive popularization of Chinese culture for a specific-language speaking country are investigated. It aims to popularize the cultural meaning of Chinese words in the specific-language speaking area.This article consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, the theories are first studied including the conceptual meanings and connotations of words, vocabulary teaching and intercultural communication, the cognitive theory of metaphor and the relationship among metaphor, language and culture. Based on these theories, the importance of the teaching of the cultural meaning of words and developing of metaphorical thinking on the popularization of modern Chinese is addressed. The comparative research on metaphors of Chinese and foreign languages is then reviewed. It intends to investigate the necessity of carrying out an exclusive Chinese cultural teaching for a specific language through a comparative analysis of the figurative usages of animal words in Chinese and Spanish.The second chapter of this article makes a detailed comparison of the figurative usage of animal words in Chinese and Spanish and analysis of the cultural derivation By listing and giving examples, this chapter compares the figurative usage of 31 animals which are generalized into four cases including same animals without figurative meaning in Spanish, same animals with totally different figurative meanings in Chinese and Spanish, same animals with both different and similar figurative meanings in Chinese and Spanish, and different animals with the same or similar figurative meaning in the two languages. By comparison, we find that the figurative usage and meaning of most animal words are very different in Chinese and Spanish, which reflects the cultural differences between the two nations.The third chapter of this article analyzes the causes of these differences by comparing living environments, life styles, thinking ways, traditional cultures, aesthetic psychology and the influence of foreign cultures, It is finally concluded that that the same part of the figurative meanings derives from the same thinking ways of human being and the similar life experiences, while the different parts reveal the cultural differences between Chinese and Spanish.Based on the interview with students from Spanish-speaking countries, the forth chapter, addresses 3 teaching strategies. These students came from Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. These students were asked to tell the figurative meanings of fish, cat, dog, cow, sheep, tigre, fox, monkey, rat, parrot, cock, ants and fly in Spanish, and try to explain their figurative meanings in Chinese, then analyze the reason of their difficulty in understanding these Chinese figurative meanings and give some teaching suggestions. The results show that the majority of students from Spanish-speaking country know very little figurative meanings of animal words in Chinese, while the cause of this phenomenon is that they were lack of the understanding of Chinese culture. Therefore, three teaching strategies are then addressed including development of exclusive Chinese teaching textbooks for a specific language, development of some specialized reference books for a specific language and set-up of Chinese culture courses such as cultural comparison of Chinese and foreign languages, Chinese movie and television appreciation, Chinese literature appreciation, etc. in order to improve the Chinese international education.