论文总字数：42773字

摘 要

隐喻是语言的重要组成部分，是人类认识客观世界的一种重要认知方式，我们的思维方式乃至行为方式本质上是隐喻性的。而语言反映着一个民族的文化，隐喻深深根植于文化之中，不同民族的文化拥有其独特的隐喻方式。

植物是人类赖以生存的一部分，人类在历史的长河中与植物有着密切的联系，因而英汉语言中都存在大量的植物词汇。这些植物的隐喻意义既有相似的一面，又存在许多不同。通过比较英汉植物隐喻的异同，可以反映其文化特点。鉴于此，本文以植物隐喻为研究内容，从英汉文学作品中选出具有代表性的植物词汇进行对比分析，在具体的文化背景里讨论英汉植物隐喻表达意义的异同，并探讨造成这种现象的文化内涵差异。通过分析可知，英汉植物隐喻相同的原因在于人类认知及文化上的共性，导致这种差异的原因在于英汉文化背景不同。

通过对比英汉植物隐喻异同，有利于人们对不同语言文化的理解，促进英汉文化的交流与融合。

关键词： 植物隐喻；植物词；隐喻意义；文化

Contents

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the Study 1

1.2 Significance of the Study 2

1.3 Research Methodology 2

1.4 Layout of the Thesis 3

Chapter Two Literature Review 3

2.1 Theoretical Basis 3

2.1.1 Definition and Nature of Metaphor 3

2.1.2 Classification of Metaphor 5

2.2 Studies of Plant Metaphors at Home and Abroad 6

2.2.1 Study of Plant Metaphors Abroad 6

2.2.2 Study of Plant Metaphors in China 6

Chapter Three Similarities and Differences in English and Chinese Plant Metaphors 8

3.1 Similarities in English and Chinese Plant Metaphors 8

3.2 Differences in English and Chinese Plant Metaphors 9

3.2.1 Different Plant Words With Same Metaphorical Meanings 9

3.2.2 Same Plant Words With Different Metaphorical Meanings 11

3.2.3 Plant Words With Distinctive Metaphorical Meanings 12

3.3 Summary 14

Chapter Four Analyses of the Cultural Universality and Differences Between English and Chinese Plant Metaphors 15

4.1 Cultural Similarities 15

4.2 Cultural Differences 16

Chapter Five Conclusion 18

5.1 Summary 18

5.2 Limitations of the Present Study and Suggestions for the Further Study 18

References 20

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Metaphor has been studied for a long history since Aristotle, a great rhetorician. Although there is a very long story for the traditional linguistic research of metaphor, it is just considered as a rhetoric way. Until the 1980s in the book Metaphors We Live by, Lakoff and Johnson’s “conceptual metaphor theory” was proposed to make metaphor study get out of the bondage of the traditional theory and connected metaphor with cognition. Since then metaphor is considered not only a kind of linguistic expression, but also the way of human thinking and acting, namely a cognitive phenomenon.

Cognitive linguistics shows that metaphor is an important way of understanding and comprehending the objective world of human beings, while plant metaphor is one of the most important ways in understanding the world. For a long time, plants play an inevitable role in nature, and are also closely linked with man’s daily life, production and culture, such as the fruit and vegetable we eat everyday, the impressive beauty of plants and flowers we enjoy, and the objects we write and paint. Therefore, plants have an indispensable influence on Chinese and English cultures. There exists a large plant vocabulary in Chinese and English, and it is proved that plants are always used to express metaphorical meanings through the analyses of the plant terms in Chinese and English literature works. These meanings have both similarities and differences between Chinese and English, and we can discover their cultural features through these plant metaphors. Besides, this paper mentions slightly the influence of human cognition on plant metaphor. We human beings have common cognitive mode for we are under the same world and have same body structures, and so we might get same inspiration from a certain plant. But at the same time metaphors are closely connected with culture, and different cultures decides the differences of plant metaphors because peoples have different bodily experiences.

Based on the above consideration, this paper tries to study the plant metaphors in Chinese and English, making a comparison of the plant words in both languages in their respective cultural context, and then analyzes the similarities and differences of their metaphorical meanings.

1.2 Significance of the Study

Cognitive linguistics shows that language is the production of human cognition. So to study plant metaphor will reinforce our ability of language understanding and learning, and we can understand metaphorical expressions better in communicating between different languages. Therefore, the task I have set myself in this paper is to conduct a contrastive analysis of the metaphorical meanings of plant metaphors in Chinese and English, in the hope of helping understand the cultural identities in China and the West, improve our language ability, and promote the cultural communication between China and the West.

1.3 Research Methodology

In order to make this thesis as scientific and persuasive as possible, this paper adopts comprehensive analysis method to make a contrastive study of English and Chinese plant metaphors. Firstly, this paper describes the linguistic phenomena of the similarities and differences of the plant metaphors in both languages, and makes a generalization about these similarities and differences. Then it will analyzes the causes from the perspective of natural environment, religion, custom, human ways of thinking, cognition, etc.

The plant words are selected from English and Chinese literature works. This paper picks out the plant words that can be found from both cultures in order to discuss their metaphorical meanings, such as rose, cherry, wormwood, goldthread, bamboo, mushroom, lotus, willow, orchid, etc. Then it illustrates the respective metaphorical meanings of each plant word in both languages.

1.4 Layout of the Thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction part that gives a general introduction of research background, and the aim and significance of the research. Chapter two is literature review that makes specific explanations of the theoretical foundation, the definition of metaphor as well as the classification of metaphor. Meanwhile, this chapter also analyzes the previous study of metaphor and plant words at home and abroad. The next two chapters are the main parts of the whole essay. Chapter three is a contrastive study of plant metaphors in both languages, and an objective description of the similarities and differences of plant metaphors. Then based on these similarities and differences, the author will conclude the cultural universality and individualities of Chinese and English metaphors in chapter four. Chapter five is the last part of the paper, including a summary and possible limitations of the present study, the suggestions for further study are also included in this part.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Basis

Metaphor is a term of using one thing to understand another through the similarities between the two. Plant metaphor is a kind of conceptual metaphors. And it is not only a kind of rhetoric methods, but a cognitive activity. This paper is a contrastive study of plant metaphors in Chinese and English.

2.1.1 Definition and Nature of Metaphor

Languages have been developing for a long history. So as a linguistic phenomenon, metaphor has been defined from different angles since ancient times.

Metaphor was traditionally defined in its linguistic aspects and ornamental functions. In the sight of Aristotle(1967), metaphor is “the application to one thing of a name belonging to another thing”. From that we will find that metaphor means the substitution or the borrowing between different nominal words. In Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”, for example, the ship plows the sea(ship is compared to a cattle, and sea a farmland ).

Till 1980, Lakoff and Johnson pointed out that metaphor is one of the important cognitive ways of human beings perceiving the outside world, and it is everywhere in our daily life, not only in our languages, but also in our minds and actions. In the book Metaphors We Live By, which a systemic cognitive theory of metaphor is stated, the authors explained that the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another(Lakoff amp; Johnson 1980). We cannot directly experience all feelings, abstract concepts and mental activities in our life, nor can we fully comprehend them on their own terms. So that is the reason why we need understand them in terms of other entities and experiences. For instance, the abstract concepts, such as time, argument and love, can be described as “time is money”, “argument is war”, “love is a journey”. Because of this nature of metaphor and human beings’ cognitive mode, the Conceptual Metaphor comes into being. And just as Lakoff says, “conceptual metaphor is a system of metaphor that lies behind everyday language and everyday conceptual system, including the most abstract concepts, and it affects the way we perceive, think, and act”(Lakoff amp; Johnson 1980). And many clear definitions of metaphor have been put forward afterwards. In the Modern Chinese Dictionary, metaphor is a kind of comparison that compares one thing to another similar thing by using the words like “is” or “become” instead of those like “as” or “like”(比喻的一种，不用‘如’‘像’等比喻词，而用‘是’‘成’等词，把某事物比拟成和它有相似关系的另一事物). And in Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, it also give a similar definition of metaphor---”Metaphor is a word or phrase used in an imaginative way to describe sb/sth else, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful. It is the common mode that Lakoff talked about in the 1980s, in which a register can be systemically talked about or expressed by the words of another register”. This definition clearly demonstrates the cognitive view of metaphor.

Summing up all these definitions of metaphor, it can be clearly seen that, for one thing, metaphor is a figure of speech attached to comparison just like simile, metonymy; for another, it is a cognitive mode, a way to represent abstract concepts in terms of concrete concepts. Whatever, metaphor is a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world and our everyday behavior reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience(Lakeoff 1980).

2.1.2 Classification of Metaphor

Modern metaphor theory has shifted its focus from the rhetorical functions to the cognitive means by which human beings see and interact with the world. From the above definitions we can understand the essence of metaphor in both rhetorical aspect and cognitive aspect. And also it is clear that conceptual metaphor plays a dominative part of metaphor nowadays when the study of cognitive linguistics has become more and more popular. So here we mainly discuss the classification of conceptual metaphor.

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