A Contrastive Study of Metaphorical Expressions of Up Sense Spatial Words in English and Chinese
- DOI
- 10.2991/icelaic-18.2018.110How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- spatial metaphor; cognitive linguistics; mapping; Up; Shang
- Abstract
The present study makes an attempt to explore the metaphorical extensions of Up sense spatial words from four aspects: quantity, state, time and social status, drawing on the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics, concentrating on the conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson. From the viewpoint of the contemporary metaphorical theory, many of our fundamental concepts are structured through spatial metaphors rooted in our physical, social and cultural experiences. To testify this claim, this study collected data from two famous literature works: one is A Dream of Red Mansions in Chinese and the other is Gone with the Wind in English. The data was analyzed from a cross-linguistic and a cross-cultural perspective and through qualitative and quantitative methods. The conclusion was made due to human beings’ shared understandings and experience that there are remarkable similarities between English and Chinese metaphorical extensions of Up and Shang. The findings support Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory, thus offering another linguistic evidence for the possible existence of a universal spatial metaphorical system, which are helpful to improve language teaching and learning and translation studies in Chinese and English since the present thesis is a contrastive study between the two languages.
- Copyright
- © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Pan He PY - 2018/12 DA - 2018/12 TI - A Contrastive Study of Metaphorical Expressions of Up Sense Spatial Words in English and Chinese BT - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2018) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 520 EP - 527 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/icelaic-18.2018.110 DO - 10.2991/icelaic-18.2018.110 ID - He2018/12 ER -