earticle

영어

This paper, by making use of insights from contemporary studies in cognitive linguistics, explores the characteristics of chinese metaphor. Cognitive linguistics is mainly concerned with the description of conceptual image schema in language. It lays emphasis on the fact that meaning stems from people's physical and social experience. So the abstract concept as target is recognized through other concrete or physical concept as their source. Relevance theory suggest that metaphor has been usually explained as a secondary linguistic process which takes place on literal language. But this paper regards Chinese metaphor as having role of the vehicle of Chinese cultural thinking styles. It indicates that metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but a way of thinking, which can help us understand the chinese culture in a better way. This is different from the common standpoint has before.