Cognitive Analysis of Chinese-English Metaphors of Animal and Human Body Part Words


  •  Meiying Song    

Abstract

Metaphorical cognition arises from the mapping of two conceptual domains onto each other. According to the “Anthropocentrism”, people tend to know the world first by learning about their bodies including Apparatuses. Based on that, people begin to know the material world, and the human body part metaphorization emerges as the times requires. Because mankind possesses same body structure, perceptive organs, same perceptive and cognitive abilities, so people have many similarities in their cognition. At the same time, both the metaphor thinking and the conceptive system are from human living experiences. As a kind of thinking mode and behavior mode, the metaphor doesn’t exist along, and it can not break away from the social and cultural environment, and it must be combined closely with certain language situation and culture. As a result of cultural influence, metaphor shows its unique nationality. Taking English-Chinese animal and human body part words as the example, the cultural cognitive difference of Chinese and English metaphors is analyzed in the article.



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