A Cognitive Comparative Study Of Plnat Metaphorsin Chinese And English-from The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

This thesis studies plant metaphors which use plant words to express two kinds of emotions,happiness and sadness in Chinese and English under the theoretical frame of Conceptual Blending Theory.The present study tries to answer two questions: what is the mechanism of those plant metaphors in Chinese and English? What kind of plants Chinese and English are used to express happiness and sadness,and why? And the thesis aims at probing how plant metaphors use plant expressions to construct happiness and sadness,that is,the working system of plan metaphors,and aims at finding whether there are differences and similarities about plan metaphors in Chinese and English or not and giving explanations about those differences and similarities which are existed.In order to answer the questions,thesis collects a number of examples of plant metaphors from two corpora,CCL and COCA.And CCL is a Chinese corpus and is used to collect Chinese examples and COCA is an English corpus.Then the thesis uses text analysis to analyze those examples thoroughly and analyze them one by one.And this thesis uses used Conceptual Blending Theory(which is abbreviated to CBT in the following)to analyze the mechanism of plant metaphors with happy and sadness connotations in order to analyze it scientifically and effectively.CBT is a classic theory in cognition,which is dynamic and has great explanatory power.In plant metaphors,there are also four mental spaces,two input spaces,generic space,and blend space.Input 1 is with plants and input 2 is with happiness or sadness,and generic space has what the two inputs have in common,and blending contains an emergent structure which tells a kind of plant is happiness or sadness.And the working,mapping and blending of mental spaces exactly uncover how happiness and sadness are added to plant metaphors step by step.It is found that the working system of plant metaphors in Chinese and English are the same.Moreover,the study makes a comparison of the examples of plant metaphors in Chinese and English,and studies what plants are used to express happiness and sadness in Chinese and English and studies why some plants are used to express happiness or sadness both in Chinese and English,andwhy some plants are used to express happiness or sadness only in Chinese or English.And it is found that Chinese uses flower,flowering opening,lotus,apricot blossom,peach blossom and red flower to express happiness,and uses withered flower,willow,fallen leaves,withered weed,chrysanthemum,Chinese parasol,plantain,and lilac to express sadness,and English uses flower,flower opening,rose,daffodil,sunflower,and juniper to express happiness,and uses withered flower,willow,fallen leaves,yellow leaves to express sadness.The study also gives explanations for why Chinese and English use those plants to express happiness and sadness from several aspects.This research can help people understand the mechanism of plant metaphors,and help people in correct using of plant metaphors,and help people to create more plant metaphors in their daily lives.Moreover,this research can help people have a comparative understanding about plant metaphors in Chinese and English,it can help people avoid misunderstandings in cross-language communication and lower the price of cross-cultural communication.