A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study of HEART Metaphor in Chinese and English

Abstract

This paper analyzes universalities and variations of HEART metaphor via qualitative and quantitative analysis of data retrieved from two authoritative, general, and monolingual corpora—Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) in Chinese and English. Results reveal that the universal bodily experience is responsible for the largely shared source domains for HEART metaphor (e.g. CONTAINER, OBJECT, LIVING ORGANISM, etc.) which justifies the universality of conceptual metaphor. However, HEART metaphor in Chinese is richer than in English due to the difference between Western dualism and ancient Chinese philosophy. Besides, the shared metaphor like OBJECT display variations in detail, and unique source domains are used for a particular culture (GAS in Chinese and MECHANICS in English). The traditional Chinese medicine can account for the unique source domain of GAS in Chinese and the other variations can be ascribed to the different social-cultural history in English and Chinese.