Abstract

English is particularly rich in both metonymic and metaphorical expressions making use of the concept heart to speak of emotional issues (Niemeier, 2000). It is not difficult to find a large number of Chinese linguistic expressions in terms of “心 (xin) (heart)” to refer to emotion or other concepts. In the present study, under the categorization of heart by Niemeier (2000), we took some examples of heart in Chinese and gave a comparison between the metonymy-based conceptual metaphors in these two languages. This study found some positive evidence for the metonymic base for metaphors. In addition, there are some different interpretations of Chinese heart expressions due to the specific culture background.

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