A Comparative Study Of Spatial Metaphors In Russian And Chinese Idioms

As a reflection of worldview typical for any given culture,idioms(phraseological units)in Russian and Chinese sensibly demonstrate concepts of space in both Russian and Chinese,display the features of metaphorical mapping common to Russian and Chinese Despite the fact that spatial metaphors in both Russian and Chinese are based on spatial deixis with a specific meaning,the differences of historical and cultural background result in typical features of metaphor mapping in two languages.In the view of Second Language Acquisition,a careful examination of metaphors contained in phraseological units could help to clarify its original meaning,lead to the idioms in daily conversation will be used in a more appropriate wayTaking Russian and Chinese idioms comprised of "up-down","forward-back","left-rights","in-out" space deixis as the research object and establishing phraseological units database,this dissertation conducts a comprehensive study of Russian and Chinese idioms with spatial metaphors,gives a consideration to its semantic features and processes of metaphorical mappingBuild on predecessors' researches,we analyzed the definition of idioms used by Russian and Chinese linguists and defined the concept of "idiom" used in this paper.At the same time,we made a general review of spatial deixis in Russian and Chinese and found the correlation between Chinese nouns of locality and spatial deixis commonly used in RussianBased on a few Russian and Chinese phraseological dictionaries,we retrieved and sorted 236 Russian idioms and 234 Chinese idioms with corresponding spatial deixis and created the database.Furthermore,from the perspective of grammar and semantics,we conducted an in-depth comparative research of spatial metaphors contained in Russian and Chinese idioms.The study found that the range of metaphorical meaning of spatial deixeses in Russian and Chinese idioms is mainly similar and based on physical experience of interaction with the outside world.However,there are some idioms,spatial metaphor is mainly based on cultural sense,metaphor interpretation requires a certain level of cultural knowledge.From the perspective of language use,most spatial metaphors in Chinese idioms are commonly used in daily speech.The spatial metaphors in Russian phraseological units are more specific,a lot of metaphorical meanings can exist only in certain Russian idioms.