Abstract：The study of metaphor enjoys a long history, especially the scholars in western countries who have studied metaphors for a long time. Nowadays, metaphor has aroused interest of many scholars in different fields such as rhetoric function, Semantics, Pragmatics, etc.. The study of metaphor steps into a new era with the publication of George Lakoff & Mark Johnson’s work Metaphors We Live By, and it also means the metaphor study has been brought into the cognitive science. In the cognitive perspective, metaphor is looked as an object we live by to understand abstract things and structure new concepts through those existed. The cognitive approach to metaphor looks metaphor as a way of human cognition. Moreover, human beings exist in an objective world, where gravitation is an indispensable part of our life, in that we are born with receptors and a central nervous system. Taken all aspects together, human beings get used to constructing ourselves and looking at the world by using many spatial expressions like “up-down”, “in-out”, and so on. Gradually our language reflects and organizes our knowledge in spatial concepts, as time goes by, human beings take it for granted. The “up/down” metaphor enjoys a priority in human’s cognition, and its mapping onto the target domains of quantity, social status, states and time enables people to understand abstract concept. This paper provides some common possibilities of its metaphorical extensions in Chinese and English, and some possible causes of similarities and difference are also provided.  

Keywords: metaphor; cognitive; mapping; “up/down”

Contents

摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1 Introduction-1

Chapter 2 Historical Backgrounds On Studies of Metaphor-3

2.1 Overall View-3

2.1.1 The Rhetorical Study of Metaphor-3

2.1.2 The Semantic Study of Metaphor-3

2.1.3 The Pragmatic Study of Metaphor-4

2.2 The Cognitive Approach To Metaphor-5

2.2.1 The Conceptual Nature of Metaphor-5

2.2.2 The Internal Structure of Metaphor: Mapping Across Domains-6

Chapter 3 The “Up/Down” Metaphor in Chinese and English-9

3.1 On Spatial Metaphor-9

3.2 The “Up/Down” Metaphor in Chinese-9

3.2.1 Quantity-9

3.2.2 Social Status-10

3.2.3 States-11

3.2.4 Time-11

3.3 The “Up/Down” Metaphor in English-12

3.3.1 Quantity-13

3.3.2 Social Status-13

3.3.3 States-14

3.3.4 Time-14

Chapter 4 Causes of Similarities and Differences-15

4.1. Causes of Similiarites-15

4.2 Causes of Differences-15

4.2.1 Different Cultural Understanding-15

4.2.2 Different Image Schema-16

4.2.3 Different Word Formation-16

Chapter 5 Conclusion-17

References-19

Acknowledgements-20