An Eco-linguistic Perspective to Look at “Add Oil”

DOI

10.2991/sohe-19.2019.4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Add Oil, Metaphor, Eco-linguistics, Interaction, Go

Abstract

“Add oil” is commonly used in Chinese to express encouragement, incitement or support with the meaning “go” or “go for it!” Currently, “add oil” has been included in Oxford English Dictionary, which is a significant event of a bit surprise. Since the Olympic Games held in Beijing in 2008, some translators have expected “Jiayou” to make its way into the English language. This paper attempts to justify “add oil” by taking an eco-linguistic perspective and making an analysis of the metaphorical implications of this expression. “Add oil”, which is based on the metaphor “A human is a vehicle”, reflects Chinese nation’s attitude towards Nature when interacting with environment. Compared with “go” in English used to express encouragement, which is based on the metaphor “Life is a journey”, “add oil” exhibits oriental color and language diversity. Its addition to English is proof of protecting metaphorical diversity worldwide in language.

Copyright

© 2019, 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/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lan He
PY  - 2019/05
DA  - 2019/05
TI  - An Eco-linguistic Perspective to Look at “Add Oil”
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Health and Education 2019 (SOHE 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 26
EP  - 30
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/sohe-19.2019.4
DO  - 10.2991/sohe-19.2019.4
ID  - He2019/05
ER  -