A Comparison Study of Metaphor Between English and Chinese

It follows the idea that “metaphor is text” which includes an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, and an allegory, reviews different kinds of metaphor, i.e., Xyz metaphor, image metaphor, met

US-China Foreign Language, ISSN 1539-8080

July 2014, Vol 12, No 7, 570-576

XIAO Sa Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

This paper studies the usage of metaphor and makes a comparison across languages It follows the idea that

“metaphor is text” which includes an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, and an allegory, reviews different kinds of metaphor, i.e., Xyz metaphor, image metaphor, metaphor in daily life, and metaphor in the understanding of individual words, and concludes the difference and similarity of metaphor between English and Chinese from the aspects of anger, happiness and sadness, and love, etc Relevant examples are used to demonstrate similarities and

differences, which are noticeable, between the performance of metaphor in Chinese and English It is also worthwhile to be aware of using and understanding metaphor in a foreign language, as well as in the acquisition of

foreign language

Keywords: metaphor, text, comparative study

Introduction: What Is Metaphor

The Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary (2006) defines metaphor as “an imaginative

way of describing something by referring to something else which is the same in a particular way” (p 901) Peter Newmark (1988) defined metaphor as

… any figurative expression: the transferred sense of a physical word; the personification of an abstraction; the application of a word or collocation to what it does not literally denote, i.e., to describe one thing in terms of another Metaphors may be “single”—viz one-word—or “extended” (a collocation, an idiom, a sentence, a proverb, an allegory, a complete imaginative text (p 104)

Snell-Hornby (1988) refused to accept Newmark’s concept of the “one-word metaphor” which supports Weinrich’s (1988) definition that “metaphor is text” (p 56) According to her understanding, a metaphor is “a complex of (at least) three dimensions (object, image, and sense), reflecting the tension between resemblance and disparity” (pp 56-57)

Based on the concept of “metaphor is text”, this paper will discuss the performance of metaphor and make a comparison across languages

Primary Metaphor and Secondary Metaphor

Black (1962) claimed that in any metaphorical statement there are two distinct subjects, which he identified

as “primary” and “secondary” From the handout of the author’s course Psychology and Communication, we can

∗ This paper is supported by the fund of Shenzhen University Teaching Reformation Project (JG2012121)

XIAO Sa, lecturer, master, School of Foreign Languages, Shenzhen University

DAVID PUBLISHING

D

find primary metaphors is a cognitive structure that emerges in course of recurrent experience It is the correlation between sensorimotor experience and subjective judgment (see Examples (1)-(3))

Example (1) Knowing is seeing:

“I see what you mean.”

Example (2) Affection is warmth:

“She is a warm person.”

“Being held warm and feeling good correlate in infant experience.”

Example (3) Important is big:

“Tomorrow is a big day.”

“Experience of big things dominating visual experience.”

Secondary metaphors is a combination of several primary metaphors

Some Kinds of Metaphor in English

Cameron and Low (1999), in their study, Researching and Applying Metaphor, mentioned that researchers

should recognize metaphor is extremely diverse and be careful to distinguish between different forms of metaphor in language (p 30) Too often metaphor scholars focus on single examples and either miss making important generalizations or mistakenly assume that selected examples of metaphor language accurately reflect all aspects of metaphoric language The study of idiomaticity, for example failed to acknowledge the metaphorical roots of many idioms because scholars tended to examine only a few of these conventional phrases, such as “kick the bucket” As researchers began to examine idioms more broadly, and sought greater generalizations in their linguistic analyses, they found that many idioms were indeed partly analyzable and motivated by enduring conceptual metaphors (Gibbs, 1994; Lakoff, 1987) Furthermore, most studies of classic

metaphoric language in psychology, linguistics have focused on “A is like B” or “A is B” statements, such as the

famous line “My love is like a red, red rose” from a poem by Robert Burns (1794) Another example is in

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (as cited in Alexander, 2003) Romeo says to Juliet: “But soft! What light

through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” (p 47) But metaphor is much more than simple “A is B” or “A is like B” statements Researchers need to be aware of the diversity of metaphoric forms and recognize that a particular theoretical account for one aspect of metaphor may not apply to other forms of metaphorical language Cameron and Low offered some ways that metaphor is expressed in English

Xyz Metaphors

There are many verbal expressions that describe complex relations among several terms Therefore, a large number of proverbial expressions, sometimes called xyz metaphors, convey meanings through the complex interactions of their terms (Turner, 1991) (see Examples (4)-(9))

Example (4) The love of money is the root of all evil

Example (5) Children are the riches of poor men

Example (6) Religion is the opiate of the masses

Example (7) Language is the mirror of the mind

Example (8) Wit is the salt of conversation

Example (9) Custom is the guide of the ignorant

Xyz metaphors involve complex mapping So readers must know the conjunction between x and z, which is interpreted in terms of a conceptual domain containing y For instance, in the sentence “Children are the riches of poor men”, readers must understand the relationship between “children” and “poor men” metaphorically in terms

of the relationship between “riches” and “rich men”

Image Metaphors

Another frequently encountered metaphor in literary texts involves not the mapping of concepts from one

domain onto another, but the mapping of images We call it “image metaphors” It reflects the mapping of mental

images from one source of knowledge onto mental images from another Poets often write for the express purpose

of creating disturbing new images, ones that result from the mappings of images structures from widely disparate knowledge domains (Cameron & Low, 1999, p 32)

Metaphor in the Daily Life

Thirdly, metaphor infiltrates many aspects of everyday life For instance, consider some of the conventional ways that we talk about love and our love relationship in every situation (see Examples (10)-(18)):

Example (10) We’re at a crossroads

Example (11) We will have to go our separate ways

Example (12) We are just spinning our wheels

Example (13) Our marriage is on the rocks

Example (14) We are going nowhere.’

Example (15) We can’t turn back now

Example (16) It is been a long bumpy road

Example (17) We’ve gotten off the track

Example (18) The relationship is a dead-end street

Metaphor in the Understanding of Individual Words

Metaphor also plays a major role in our understanding of individual words, especially in making sense of how a single word can express a multitude of related meanings (see Table 1)

Table 1

Examples of Metaphor in the Understanding of Individual Words

Group 1:

We stand to sing the national anthem

Ray stands 6’5’’ tall

The clock stands on mantel

Group 2:

I can’t stand my job

The part stands for the whole

The law still stands

Our interpretation of the first group relies on our physical understanding of the concept of “standing”, while the second group metaphorically elaborates on different aspects of the physical sense of stand It has been revealed by psycholinguistic studies that people have tacit knowledge of the metaphorical connection between the physical and non-physical senses of polysemous words, such as “stand” (Gibbs & Colston, 1995) That is, people make sense of different uses of stand because of their tacit understanding of several image schemas that

arise partly from the ordinary bodily experience of standing perceive different senses of stand as similar meaning, partly on the basis of the underlying image schema profile for each use of the word in context

There is no doubt that metaphor helps people to improve the understanding of an abstract concept With the help of it, people can express the meaning more accurately, concisely, and explicitly

Comparison Between English and Chinese

The study of metaphor has a very long history Traditionally, metaphor is viewed as a matter of special or extraordinary language—a set of deviant linguistic expressions whose meaning is reducible to some set if literal propositions Viewed as such, it is called “a figure of speech” and its study was confined mostly to rhetoric This view can be traced back as early as Aristotle According to this view, metaphors are not necessary They are just nice Most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor But in Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980)

study, Metaphor We Live By, they found on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life And our

conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature Metaphor is crucial in language and thought Lakoff (1986) also thought that metaphor is not only a way of naming, but also a way of thinking It is a figure of thought as well as a figure of speech On this view, a metaphor “is a process by which we understand and structure one domain of experience in terms of another domain of a different kind” (Johnson, 1987, p 15) Therefore, the study of metaphor is central not only to rhetoric but also to the study of language and cognition in general

Language is part of culture Different countries have different cultures and languages Metaphor maybe is one of the most important features in language that reflects cognitive vision and epitomizes cultural context So, when we study metaphor in different language, we should shed much light on cross-cultural similarities and dissimilarities in ways of speaking and thinking Now let us go to next part to compare some metaphorical expression in two different languages: English and Chinese

Anger

In English, anger is heat and fire See Examples (19)-(24):

Example (19) She was doing a slow burn

Example (20) He was breathing fire

Example (21) His blood is burning

Example (22) Your words just added fuel to the fire

Example (23) I am burned up!

Example (24) Smoke was pouring out of his ears

In Chinese, we also have a concept that “anger is fire” (see Table 2)

From Table 2, we can see that the metonymic expressions of “anger” are very similar between these two languages YU (1995) considered the reason is all the expressions are primarily based on bodily experience that should be universal among human beings

After compare English and Chinese expressions of “anger”, we find that both two languages can share exactly the same conceptual metaphor “anger is fire” YU (1995) pointed out that the actual linguistic expressions they use for the conceptualization may be similar or different In both languages, the emotion of “anger” is conceptualized as a destructive force that may be harmful not only to the angry people but also to people who are

around them A difference between English and Chinese is that Chinese use more body parts in its conventionalized phrases of anger In Table 2, we can see that liver, heart, ears, eyes, nose, and mouth are specified as places where “fire burns” when one get angry Besides these parts of body, Chinese also have some

other places to express “angry” There are some examples in Table 3

Table 2

Metaphor of Anger in Chinese and English: Similarity

Chinese English

Wo fa huo le I am shooting fire

Ni zai huo shang jiao you You are adding oil on the fire

Ta gan huo hen wang His liver-fire is roaring

Wo huo mao san zhang My fire fly off tree units of length

Ta gan huo zheng wang His heart- fire is roaring

Ta huo qi zheng da His fire is very big now

Ta qi de qi qiao sheng yan He is so angry that his ears, eyes, nose, mouth are emitting smoke

Ta nu chong xin tou qi His heart is shooting fire

Wo re xue shang yong My blood is burning

Table 3

Metaphor of Anger in Chinese and English Translated Version

Chinese English

Ta lao xiu cheng nu He is angry from his head

Wo nu fa chong guan I am so angry that my hair stand and let my hat rise up

Wo du zi dou gei qi za le I was so angry that my belly exploded

Moreover, in Chinese, we also can use “qi”, which means gas to express anger There are some examples in

Table 4

Table 4

Examples of “qi”

Chinese English

Ni qi si wo la I am so angry that I am smoking to die

Ni you zai qi wo le You are gassing me up again

Wo fa pi qi le I will smoke

Ta nu qi chong tian His angry gas is gushing into the sky

Happiness and Sadness

Happiness According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), a major conceptual metaphor for the notion of

happiness in English is orientational: “happy is up” We can find some examples (see Examples (25)-(30)) Example (25) I am feeling up

Example (26) That boosted my spirits

Example (27) My spirits rose

Example (28) You are in high spirits Thinking about her always gives me a lift

Example (29) We had to cheer him up

Example (30) They were high spirits

Chinese also share the similar metaphorical concept and have a number of expressions that express happiness in terms of an upward orientation (see Table 5)

Table 5

Examples of Upward Orientation

Chinese English

Wo men hen gao xing We are very high spirit

Ta hen xing fen He is very spirit-lift

Ta qing xu hen gao He is in a high mood

Wo xing tou zheng gao I am very high in spirits

Ta zheng zai xing tou shang He is at the head of his spirits

Sadness Lakoff and Johnson (1980) believed that “sad is down” There are some examples (see Examples

(31)-(34)):

Example (31) I am depressed

Example (32) He is really low these days

Example (33) I fell into a depression

Example (34) My spirits sank

Also in Chinese, people use the similar concept For example (see Table 6):

Table 6

Examples of Downward Orientation

Chinese English

Wo xin yi chen My heart sank

Wo bu gao xing I am very low spirit

Ta qing xu di luo He is in a low mood

Therefore, it is clear to see that English and Chinese are very similar in this aspect, that is, the concept

“happy” is oriented “up” and “sad” or “unhappy” is oriented “down”

Love

Examples of love metaphor in English are as follows (see Examples (35)-(36)):

Example (35) I paid a lot for so little love

Example (36) Love is a journey

Examples of love metaphor in Chinese are listed in Table 7

Table 7

Examples of Metaphor of Love in Chinese

Wo men zui ru ai he We plunge into the river of love

Wo men zui ru qing wang We plunge into the net of love

Wo men jian qi ai de xiao wu We build a cabin of love

Wo men gong zhu ai chao We build a nest of love

The examples in Table 7 illustrate that love is merchandize in English saying People gain for it and then get the ideal ending However, the traditional Chinese idea makes people think that love is priceless So people could

use the natural resources to describe love

Conclusion

We can see that both English and Chinese have metaphorical expression for identical things and also the expressions are similar in a certain extent Moreover, the differences between these two unrelated languages are noticeable As the English as Foreign Language (EFL) practitioners, we should remind the importance while we

are teaching the students

References

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