Dissertation > Excellent graduate degree dissertation topics show

A Corpus-Based Study of Chinese Animal Body Part Metaphors

Author: ZhaoJie
Tutor: LiaoGuangRong
School: Hunan Normal University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: animal body parts metaphor source domain target domain
CLC: H15
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 107
Quote: 0
Read: Download Dissertation

Abstract


Since ancient times animals are closely linked with mankind’s survival and development. There are huge amount of animal expressions in Chinese, which have become an important part of the Chinese language and culture characteristics. Mainly based on Lakoff s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this thesis studies Chinese animal body part metaphors by statistical analysis.First, the author builds a corpus of animal body part metaphors, taking 26 kinds of animals with their 99 body parts mapped onto 286 different entities as the research subject in order to cover the largest scope of animal body parts metaphors. Then classifications are made of these animal body part metaphors according to the features of the target domain. The research finds out that nearly all animal body parts serve as source domain to be mapped onto other domains, expressing concepts of either concrete or non-concrete entities. The data analysis shows that there are big difference in the percentage of mappings of each animal and their body parts. The concepts understood in terms of animal body parts are also uneven in their percentages. Domestic animals that have a close relationship with human beings are frequently mapped, for example, the ox, dog and chicken have more body part metaphors. Among the wild animals tiger has the third largest number of body part metaphors. Of all the body parts, the external ones are more often mapped as source domain than internal organs, such as animal head, tail, skin, feather, eyes and mouth. The study of the target domain reveals that among the concrete things, concept of human, human body parts and objects take up a bigger percentage while among the abstract things, abstract concept/ideas and human characteristics take up a bigger percentage.Since metaphor and culture are interwoven together, the research on metaphors will essentially uncover certain particular cultural implications. The statistical investigation of the target domains of animal body part metaphors reveals that the most frequently understood concept in terms of animal body parts is human body part. The reason is on the one hand due to the high degree of similarity between them; on the other hand, traditional Chinese culture used to take things as an integrated whole, with an instinctive imagery thinking mode. People’s understanding of the world reconciles the perceptual characteristics of the objective world with human’s rational feelings, the concrete with the abstract. These metaphorical expressions are a manifestation that our thinking is metaphorical in nature. Meanwhile, while the concepts are understood in terms of animal body parts, they are often associated with the cultural connotations of animals.

Related Dissertations

  1. Metaphor in Marry Hesse’s Network Model Theory of Scientific Explanation,N02
  2. The Epistemological Meaning of Conceptual Metaphor,B842.1
  3. Emily Dickinson's poetry Cognitive Metaphor,I712.072
  4. Conceptual Metaphor in high school English vocabulary teaching empirical research,G633.41
  5. Conceptual Metaphor Theory Perspective \,I046
  6. The Research of the Yibai Zhang’s City Movie on Creation,J905
  7. Reconstruction of the Image of Teachers Based on the View of the Teacher Metaphor,G451.1
  8. The Analysis on the Word Up and Under,H146
  9. A Cognitive Analysis on the Mapping Models of Conceptual Metaphors in English Economic News Headlines,H315
  10. A Study on Metaphor Interpretation & Translation Based on Relevance Theory,H05
  11. A Study of the Conceptual Metaphors in American Presidential Inaugural Address (APIA),H315
  12. Presidential Radio Address of Interpersonal Metaphor Research,H315
  13. U.S. public political speeches of metaphor,H315
  14. Cultural Perspective \,H315.9
  15. Metaphors teaching cultural factors,H195
  16. On Translation Methods of Nicknames from the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory,H315.9
  17. The Analysis of Semantic Expansion Mechanism to Polysemy Onomatopoeia,H36
  18. A Comparative Study on the Polysemization of Basic Taste Words in Chinese and English,H313
  19. The Ideological Power of Metaphor-Case Study of Political Speeches Given by George W.Bush and Hu Jintao,H05
  20. A Comparative Study on Metaphor and Metonymy,H05
  21. The use of conceptual blending theory of verbal humor American talk show,H315

CLC: > Language, writing > Chinese > Writing,rhetoric
© 2012 www.DissertationTopic.Net  Mobile