A Comparative Study Of FEAR Metaphors In English And Chinese From The Perspective Of Cognitive Construal

Emotion,as an important part in human experience,is one of the most central and universal aspects of human experience.How to understand and conceptualize emotions has always been a concern.There are similarities and differences in the conceptualization of emotions in different languages.The thesis mainly conducts a comparative study on the metaphorical characteristics of the concept of FEAR in English and Chinese.The Chinese word“恐惧”in CCL and the English word FEAR in BBC were used as corpus.The study,within the theoretical framework of Construal Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory,adopts the methods of quantitative analysis,corpus analysis and comparative analysis.We intend to focus on three points:（1）the metaphor mappings of FEAR in both languages;（2）construal operation of FEAR in English and Chinese respectively;（3）the similarities and differences in construal operation of FEAR in English and Chinese.Our major findings are summarized as follows:（1）Similar ontological metaphors of FEAR in English and Chinese,such as,FEAR IS GAS,FEAR IS ILLNESS,FEAR IS LIQUID,FEAR IS NATURAL FOURCE,FEAR IS FOOD,FEAR IS CONTAINER,FEAR IS DARKNESS.Similar structural metaphors of FEAR in English and Chinese,such as,FEAR IS BURDEN,FEAR IS OPPONENT IN A STRUGGLE.There are also different ontological metaphors.Ontological metaphor of FEAR in English is FEAR IS GOD,but FEAR IS A GHOST in Chinese.There are different structural metaphors.Structural metaphors of FEAR in English is FEAR IS CREATION,but FEAR IS LIVING ORGANISM in Chinese.（2）Based on Construal Theory,in the dimension of prominence,both English and Chinese highlight a certain stage when mapping the two domains.In the dimension of focusing,both English and Chinese FEAR focus on some feeling during the mapping process,activating related conceptual domains.In the dimension of perspective,both English and Chinese FEAR adopt a negative perspective which describes bad influence in the projection process.In addition,English FEAR highlights the result in the projection process,highlighting reacting results when facing some situation,forming different collocations.Chinese“恐惧”tends to highlight the initial stage of the formation of things in the projection process,focuses on the scope of ghosts,forming different metaphorical expressions.English speakers focus on the concrete stage,while Chinese speakers focus on the abstract characteristic.（3）The similarities about emotion metaphors in English and Chinese further prove that Construal Theory proposed by cognitive linguistics are based on common body experiences and mentality,which further validates the universality of construal dimensions put forward by cognitive linguistics.There are some differences in construal dimensions of FEAR metaphors in English and Chinese,which indicates the differences in their cultural characteristics and geographical environment will affect people to use different ways of seeing the same thing.Through in-depth exploration of FEAR metaphors in English and Chinese,the present study has deepened our understanding of the conceptualization process of fear and the emotion of fear.Secondly,the contrastive analysis has revealed the effects of cultural characteristics and geographical environment on FEAR metaphor.In addition,this study has opened up a new research perspective for the comparative study of other emotion metaphors.