汉英母语使用者对隐喻源文本及译本认知的对比研究——以《孔子学院》期刊为例

论文总字数：66010字

摘 要

本选题以《孔子学院》期刊文化专栏中的汉语隐喻及英译本作为研究语料，对汉英母语使用者展开格式塔认知实验，结合社会属性对数据进行分析，探讨隐喻在汉英两种语言及文化中的差异。

本研究分为三步，描述汉英母语使用者对隐喻源文本及英译本的认知模式；分析研究对象社会属性与认知度关系；对比中英文隐喻的文化认知差异。中外隐喻的比较可以拓宽我们的思路，增进互相了解。此外，从社会语言学角度采用实证方法对隐喻的认知度进行调查分析，开辟了语言与社会研究新视角，可以更好的了解隐喻在人们生活中的使用及理解程度，促进人们的交流。

研究表明，以汉语为母语的人倾向于接受异质隐喻，而以英语为母语的人更倾向于接受同质隐喻。年龄、性别、专业等社会属性均会影响英语母语者和汉语母语者。无论研究对象使用何种语言，年龄都是影响研究对象可接受程度的主要因素。汉语母语者的教育水平、专业会影响其对隐喻的接受程度，英语母语者的工作经历、是否去过中国和学习汉语时长会影响其对隐喻的接受程度。

关键词：隐喻接受度；对比研究；《孔子学院》期刊

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements I

English Abstract II

Chinese Abstract III

Table of Contents IV

List of Tables VI

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Purpose 2

1.3 Research Significance 3

1.4 Layout of the Thesis 4

Chapter Two Literature Review 5

2.1 Metaphor 5

2.1.1 Definition of Metaphor 5

2.1.2 Classification of Metaphor 6

2.1.3 Related research from home and abroad 6

2.2 Research gaps and possible solutions 8

Chapter Three Methodology 9

3.1 Research Questions 9

3.2 Participants 9

3.3 Instruments 9

3.4 Data Collection 12

3.5 Data Analysis 12

Chapter Four Results and Discussions 14

4.1 Acceptability of Metaphor to Chinese and English Speakers 14

4.1.1 Results 14

4.1.2 Discussion 15

4.2 Correlation between Social Attributes and Acceptability of Metaphor 17

4.2.1 Results 17

4.2.2 Discussion 20

Chapter Five Conclusion 23

5.1 Major Findings 23

5.2 Research Limitations and Improvement Suggestions 23

References 25

Appendix I Questionnaire for English Native Speakers 27

Appendix II Questionnaire for Chinese Native Speakers 32

Appendix III Questionnaire Data 36

List of Tables

Table 1: Social attributes of 80 participants 9

Table 2: T test results of heterogeneous metaphor samples 14

Table 3: T test results of homogeneous metaphor samples 14

Table 4: The acceptability of metaphors to different native speakers 15

Table 5: Linear regression results of Chinese heterogeneous metaphor sample 18

Table 6: Linear regression results of Chinese homogeneous metaphor samples 19

Table 7: Linear regression results of English heterogeneous metaphor samples a 20

Table 8: Linear regression results of English homogeneous metaphor samples a 21

Table 9: Linear regression results of English heterogeneous metaphor samples b 22

Table 10: Linear regression results of English homogeneous metaphor samples b 23

Chapter One Introduction

• 1. Research Background

As economy increasingly develops and the world gradually globalizes, people in different districts communicate more frequently. However, the existence of figurative language in information exchange cannot be ignored. Figurative language exists in all kinds of languages in the world, such as similes, metaphors, proverbs, idiomatic sentences, onomatopoeia and so on. One of figurative languages, what we call metaphor, is to describe an object by using the description language of other things (Lakoff amp; Johnson 1980). For example, in sentence “someone’s smile is like a flower” and “someone’s simile is a flower”, the sentence with word “like” is a simile, while without “like” is a metaphor. Different with the obvious and easily discernible similes, metaphors are used unconsciously when communicating. Metaphor plays an important role in daily communication. It not only affects people’s way of thinking and reflects the cultural pattern of the world, but also serves as a powerful tool for the exchange of ideas and understanding of other things. Richards (1936) ever said that one of three sentences is a metaphor in every day’s life. This shows the importance of metaphor in daily life. Metaphor is not only a kind of rhetoric, but also an important part of all social relations, processes and structures, and an indispensable part of human thinking.

The study on metaphor in literature, especially rhetoric has become mature. But in recent years, the study of metaphor has gone far beyond the field of rhetoric, and the field of study on metaphor has been extended to multidisciplinary and multidimensional. Scholars began to study metaphor from the perspective of linguistics, and the direction of second language acquisition also attracted the attention of the academic circle. In general, metaphors are widely used by native speakers. Therefore, it is difficult for even fluent L2 learners to comprehend and grasp the meaning of metaphors. It is not difficult to find the low utilization rate of metaphors from previous studies. In particular, studies show that the metaphorical competence of learners is as significant as language capacity (Kittay 1987). However, a large part of studies on metaphor pay attention to the text, and there are few empirical studies. The research on metaphor with empirical methods can help people understand cognitive model of metaphor in a deeper way, and provide empirical research methods for the study of cultural differences between English and Chinese metaphors.

• 1. Research Purpose

In this study, Chinese metaphorical source texts and their English translation in the cultural column of Confucius Institute publication were selected as the corpus. Based on the previous research results, gestalt cognitive experiment method was used to determine the experimental objects according to the types of the audience's social attributes, and cognitive experiment was designed and implemented. By analyzing the experimental data and obtaining the experimental results, this paper studies the acceptability of metaphors to Chinese and English native speakers and compares the cultural cognitive differences between Chinese and English speakers toward metaphors.

It is regarded that both metaphor and Chinese-English translation is a kind of mapping. In the view of cognitive linguists, mapping is a major and relatively common cognitive phenomenon among various cognitive abilities, which is to form similar or different matching relationships by projecting some concepts onto others (Lakoff 1989: 5-11). When people think and communicate, the mapping link of psychological space is constructing. This kind of mapping is a cognitive operation process in which a speaker uses a concept in his mental space to refer to and stimulate the concept in another person’s mental space (Fauconnier 1997: 8-10). Translation between languages is a relatively complex psychological cognitive activity, and the theory of cognitive mapping can be used not only to explain metaphor and other language phenomena, but also to investigate the complex process of translation between languages (Wang He 2014: 7).

To translate metaphors is quite difficult due to the multiple mappings involved. Translation mainly involves the understanding of original language and the output of objective language (Su 2001). From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the understanding of the source language is a process in which the translator constructs the cognitive psychological space of the source text in mind by the information of the source language. Once this mental space is formed in the mind of the translator, it will be mapped into the mental space of the target language through the target language. At the same time through comparing the mapping of the mental space between the source language and target language, the cognitive result -- translation is formed. The psychological construction and mutual projection are restricted and influenced by their cognitive models. Generally speaking, the cognitive model is composed of the source domain and the target domain, of whose specific components are their “valence” (Liu 2003: 56). Since cognitive models of different nations are formed based on their own psychological experience, the similarities and differences of different nations’ psychological experience will lead to the differences of cognitive systems. In fact, translation is to find a psychological justification for the source language in the psychological space of the target language. Due to the different cognitive modes in source language and target language, various similar or dissimilar mapping relations may occur between the two cognitive modes in the translation process. The existence of multiple mapping makes the understanding of metaphor more difficult, and easily cause an understanding deviation, so through the analysis on acceptability of the source corpus and translation of metaphor, this paper tries to explore the differences in cognitive mode, so as to understand the difference between Chinese and English culture, to promote the development of the metaphor translation and communication between the two cultures.

• 1. Research Significance

Culture is the collective expression of a nation’s language, customs, conventions and even historical features, mode of thinking and religious beliefs. Nowadays international exchanges have become increasingly active, so it is of great practical significance to pay attention to the comparative study of Chinese and foreign cultures and understand the similarities and differences between the two countries, so to expand our development ideas and enhance mutual understanding. Every nation has its own culture, which comes into being under different circumstance. Language is a vital part of culture, and metaphor, as a way to convey culture, is a mirror reflecting national culture. Metaphor is often viewed as a trope of literate. In fact, in essence, metaphor is a significant means for people to know and explain the world around them. The comparison between Chinese and English speakers’ reception toward metaphors can broaden our thinking and enhance our mutual understanding. In addition, from the view of sociolinguistics, the usage of empirical method to study the acceptability of metaphor opens up a new perspective for the study of language and society, providing people a chance to better understand the use and meaning of metaphor in people's life and promote people's communication.

1.4 Layout of the Thesis

The paper is divided into five parts. The first part is introduction, which gives a brief introduction of the background, purpose and significance. The second part is literature review. In this part, the definition and classification will be introduced, to provide theoretical support for later research. Also, related research at home and aboard will be displayed, from which we can get some references to improve our research. The third part is research methodology. In this section, two questions are raised and the participants and methods of the study are introduced. The fourth part is results and discussion, which aims at finding answers. The last part is conclusion, including major findings and limitations and suggestions for further research.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Metaphor

2.1.1 Definition of Metaphor

Metaphor in a narrow sense is a concept of rhetoric, in which A is used to imply B. In English, a metaphor is different from a simile in that it is not represented by a “like” or “as”. It is a kind of hidden comparison, which is expressed as “A is B”. For example,

He is a pig.

She is a woman with a stony heart.

Mark Twain is a mirror of America.

All the world's a stage.

Metaphor is a concept of linguistic and psychological domains. As scholar in metaphors, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposed that the essence of metaphor is to build a bridge between language and cognitive function, so as to use one thing or experience to explain another thing or experience. If we want to perceive and describe unknown things, we need to apply what we are familiar with. The cognitive process is the core of metaphor. It deepens our knowledge of the unknown by comparing with the known concept. American psychologist Ausubel (1967) in his meaningful learning theory argued that the real learning process was a process of establishing the connection between old and new knowledge and the process of knowledge internalization, which proved the important role of metaphor in cognition. For example, if we connect the mathematical axiom of “the shortest line segment between two points” with the spatial concept of “shortcut”, students’ internalized reception will be much easier.

All in all, metaphor is both a figure of speech and a cognitive mode. It exists in our language, culture, thinking, social life and other aspects, reflecting the commonness and characteristics of human cognition. Metaphor, as a way of thinking, is a powerful tool for human to perceive the world. It is set up between cognition and language as a bridge of thinking, which greatly improve our cognitive level. And the study of metaphoric cognitive mechanism will help us to better use language and creative thinking. Therefore, learning to understand and use metaphor correctly is of profound significance for us to perceive language and appreciate language as an art.

2.1.2 Classification of Metaphor

Conceptual metaphor theory was put forward by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). They believed that metaphor is more than a figure of speech, but also a style of thinking. Working mechanism of metaphor is the “mapping theory”. Lakoff thought that each metaphor has its internal structure. It includes three parts: source domain, target domain and mapping. For example, in metaphor “love is bird”, bird is used to comprehend “love”. The word “love” is the target domain while “bird” is source domain. The source domain conceptualization the target domain.

In Metaphors We Live By (1980), Lakoff classified metaphors as three kinds: structural metaphor, orientation metaphor and entity metaphor. Structural metaphor is a frame to use one concept to build another, such as metaphor “life is money” and “time is Journey”. Orientation metaphor refers to the concept of “up and down, high and low” based on the concept of direction. Entity metaphor refers to treating intangible concepts such as abstract and vague thoughts and feelings and psychological activities as tangible entities, so as to quantify and identify their features. Emotional metaphors are mostly entity metaphors, such as “love is bird” and “love is plant”.

However, when classifying the corpus in this study, it is found that some metaphors cannot be completely and accurately put into a certain category according to Lakoff’s classification. It is because there is no clear boundary between each category in his classification and there exist overlapping parts, which leads to the situation that a metaphor may belong to two categories at the same time. For example, “Time flies” can be considered as a structural metaphor that takes time as a bird, or as an entity metaphor that uses the specific “bird” to describes time. The classification of metaphor is the necessary forerunner of this research, so we attempt to classify metaphors by homogeneous metaphor and heterogeneous metaphor, which is classified by whether the source and target domain belong to same type of concepts. If they belong to the same concept type, it is homogeneous metaphor; or it is heterogeneous metaphor. Then Chinese and English native speakers’ cognitive acceptability to homogeneous metaphors and heterogeneous metaphors is studied respectively.

2.1.3 Related research from home and abroad

The concept of metaphor is originally a rhetorical device, which refers to a kind of mental association based on which one can replace or use to describe another. It was come up with by the psychologist Aristotle (1457). He pointed out that people's cognitive process was to use what is known to comprehend what is unknown. Later it became a basic theory to study metaphor.

The study of metaphor abroad is generally believed to start from Henderson (1982). He studied and explored the metaphor usage in economic discourse, which is considered as the first work in English metaphor research. He focuses on the operation of metaphor and summarizes three roles of metaphor in economical field. In the 80s of last century, Lakoff and Johnson described the conceptual metaphor theory in a detailed and systematic way from a cognitive perspective, and argued that “metaphorical language is the mirror of thinking, a kind of ontological thinking mode that human beings are familiar with the world, namely the metaphorical conceptual system, and a basis for human cognition, thinking, language and even behavior” (1980: 87), which builds a solid foundation for the rapid development of cognitive linguistics and remarks the beginning of conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics research system. Mc Closkey (1983) made a further study on metaphors in economic field. In her series book The Rhetoric of Economics, she pointed out that metaphor is very popular in economic field, and it is one of the most important kind of economic rhetoric.

The study of metaphor in China began in the mid-1990s. Most of those who are engaged in the study of metaphor are linguists and their study can be divided into three fields: first, study of metaphor; second, comparative study of metaphors in English and Chinese, also called the study of metaphor and culture, which involves the culture of English-speaking countries and China; third, the study of metaphor and language teaching. At present, the theories used in domestic researches are relatively simple, most of which are limited to conceptual metaphor theory and few of them use relatively new theories in metaphor research to analyze and study.

Many valuable progress has been made in the research of metaphor translation in China. Chen and Yang (2007) probed into the matters needing attention of English metaphor translation and proved the universality of the metaphor in English with examples. At same time, they listed the fixed types of conversion in the translation of metaphor, and applied the translation theory to the translation of metaphor. Zhang (2006) explained metaphors in detail and deeply analyzed the formation mechanism and translation process of metaphor in combination with metaphor, so as to guide the translation of metaphor. In her essay Metaphorical Analysis of Economic Discourse and Its Teaching of Reading, Luo (2000) proposed that in business English teaching, working mechanism and structure of metaphor should be taught to hence student’s metaphorical awareness in reading.

• 1. Research gaps and possible solutions

Though previous studies on metaphor are abundant and relatively sound, there still exist some problems in two aspects: research content and method (Yu 2016). From the perspective of research content, current studies on metaphor concentrate on the following three aspects: metaphor translation; the significance of metaphor theory in language teaching and studies of the cognition of metaphor used in a particular field or text; the cross-cultural comparative study of metaphor is relatively weak. To solve such problems, studies on the use of metaphor in different language and research on keywords of metaphors can be done to enrich cross-cultural comparative study. In terms of research method, qualitative research is the most frequently used method in previous studies on metaphors while empirical research is insufficient. To increase accuracy of study, empirical research should be encouraged in studies.

Chapter Three Methodology

3.1 Research Questions

1) How do Chinese and English native speakers perceive the source texts and English versions of metaphors?

2) How are the social attributes of the participants related to their acceptability model?

3.2 Participants

This research conducts a random sampling survey on Chinese native speakers and English native speakers through We Chat and other social platforms in the form of network questionnaire. There are 40 Chinese native speakers and 40 English native speakers who have given the final feedback results. Those 80 participants’ social attributes are shown as below.

Table 1 Social attributes of 80 participants

3.3 Instruments

3.3.1 Questionnaire

First of all, this paper investigates the cognitive status of Chinese and English native speakers on the source texts and English versions of metaphors through the form of questionnaire in Chinese and English. Secondly, in terms of the content of the questionnaire, metaphors and their translations in the cultural column of the Confucius institute publications between 2017 and 2018 are selected as the research data. Since the cognitive patterns of native speakers in Chinese and English are about to be compared, the absence of translation is excluded in the questionnaire.

Since metaphors are related to culture and the research involves questionnaires in both Chinese and English, metaphors in the column of culture in Confucius Institute publication were selected as corpus. Firstly, these metaphors are divided into three parts according to Lakoff's classification, and some similar metaphors with high frequency were selected. As mentioned in the previous chapter 2.1.2 on classification of metaphor, when studying these metaphors according to Lakoff's classification, the researcher finds Lakoff’s three types of metaphor overlap with each other. Therefore, the selected metaphors are classified again according to their homogeneity and heterogeneity. Considering that there should not be too many question items in one questionnaire, 28 metaphors were finally selected.

Instead of employing dichotomies or rating scales, the questionnaire adopts gestalt graph to measure the acceptability to the participants, which will be introduced in the next section.

3.3.2 Gestalt Theory

Gestalt, according to Christian Von Ehrenfels, either refers to form of an object or features related to the form and it is the real essence of any perception (Pillsbury 1933: 484-485). Gestalt psychology is developed to understand the laws behind the ability to obtain and maintain perceptions in the world. It can be utilized to reveal the process of perceptions. When an individual is exposed to an objective thing, the human mind forms a percept. In short words, perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli. Through perception, the physical world is closely connected to the psychological world; thus there is a certain correlation between physical forms and mental activities via perception. According to Guy (2009), one of the important ways for people to perceive the world is picture; the perception is formed out of people’s spontaneous and subconscious reaction. To sum up, Gestalt pictures are justified to reflect participants’ understanding and attitudes towards the objective things.

Gestalt began with the study of vision, but not restricted to vision and perception. It is also reflected in use of language and Gestalt pictures have been applied in research of attitude toward use of language. For example, the “bubble task” was applied to “investigate laypeople’s mental models of languages and administered to speakers of Swiss German dialects” in Berthele’s study (2010: 265), where the participants were required to assign the language varieties to the bubbles which belong to the Gestalt pictures and describe those varieties.

Pictures used in the Gestalt experiment are chosen and adapted by the researcher from some famous pictures of fine arts (See Appendix 1amp;2). To be specific, among the six pictures, Picture 1 (Seurat 1884), Picture 3 (Mondrian 1930) and Picture 5 (Zhang, 2010: 13) are chosen from well-known fine art works representing good examples of balance while the other three are adaptations based on these three by violating balance (http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/paintings-analysis/sunday-afternoon-on-grande-jatte.htm).

The rationale for the choice and adaptation of these six pictures is that it has been acknowledged that the sense of balance helps to establish a stable and harmonious effect, thus carrying a positive impact upon audience (Zhang 2010: 13).

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