UPM Institutional Repository

Lion metaphors in Chinese and English


Citation

Wei , Lixia and Wong , Bee Eng and Lim, C. B. (2013) Lion metaphors in Chinese and English. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 21 (2). pp. 517-534. ISSN 0128-7702; ESSN: 2231-8534

Abstract

This study intends to explore the cultural similarities and differences between the lion metaphors in Mandarin Chinese and British English. Most previous studies on animal metaphors focussed on the expressions with human beings as the target domain by collecting data either from questionnaires or dictionaries based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This study, however, focusses on the expressions with non-humans as the target domains and is based on data collected from authoritative corpora. Three hundred and ninety-seven metaphorical expressions in Mandarin Chinese were identified from the Modern Chinese Corpus compiled by the Centre for Chinese Linguistics of Peking University (CCL Corpus) and 241 metaphorical expressions in British English were identified from the British National Corpus (BNC). After analysing the expressions from the perspective of the source domain and the target domain, the results show that first, the metaphorical expressions in Mandarin Chinese are mainly projected from the lion’s appearance to non-humans, but those in British English are mainly projected from the lion’s characteristics to non-humans. Second, the expressions are mainly mapped onto seven target domains in each language; four are the same. In addition, the dominant evaluation of the seven target domains in each language is mostly neutral. Third, ten conceptual metaphors were generalised from Mandarin Chinese and one from British English. All of these indicate the occurrence of cultural similarities as well as differences in the lion metaphors in the two languages.


Download File

[img]
Preview
PDF
Lion Metaphors in Chinese and English.pdf

Download (531kB) | Preview

Additional Metadata

Item Type: Article
Divisions: Faculty of Modern Language and Communication
Publisher: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press
Keywords: British English; Conceptual Metaphor Theory; Cultural similarities and differences; Lion metaphors; Mandarin Chinese
Depositing User: Mohd Hafiz Che Mahasan
Date Deposited: 29 Oct 2015 08:36
Last Modified: 29 Oct 2015 08:36
URI: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/40668
Statistic Details: View Download Statistic

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item