Comparative Study Of The Six Representative Animal Metaphors In Chinese And German Idioms And Pedagogical Applications

Idioms are fruits of language and culture accumulated in the long history of human development.They not only carry the meaning of words,but also contain rich and diverse cultural characteristics.Metaphor is one of the most basic ways of thinking and cognitive means of human beings,to understand ourselves and the world.Animals have been related to the lives of human beings since ancient times.Metaphor can transcend limitation in understanding and help to recognize human beings in the way of animals.The comparative study of animal idioms between different languages is the focus of Chinese idiom metaphor research,but the study of animal idiom metaphors between Chinese and German is rarely discussed.From the perspective of conceptual metaphor,the study takes six representative animals in Chinese and German cultures as a typical subject for comparative study of the metaphorical meaning of animal idioms.Statistical analysis method was used to collate and analyze the corpus of 1544 Chinese idioms for six representative animals and 355 German idioms for six representative animals,and then comparative analysis method to analyze the metaphorical meaning of Chinese and German animal idioms,to inductively reveal mechanism of the generation of metaphorical meanings in Chinese and German cultures.This study will help Chinese learners to deepen their understanding and knowledge of Chinese language and culture in the teaching of animal metaphorical idioms.Since metaphorical image of animal and culture are complementary and interrelated,using conceptual metaphor theory as a research framework to study animal metaphor idioms can explore deeper cultural connotation from a new perspective,to better understand way of thinking of people in both countries and the inner mechanism characteristics of the two different cultures.It will also help to find more suitable teaching strategies of Chinese animal idioms to learners from German-speaking countries,so that Chinese idioms will be taught to learners from German-speaking countries more effectively,to deepen mutual understanding between the two countries and promote SinoGerman cultural exchange.Table 7;Reference 54...