隐喻的文化研究

Cultural Study of Metaphor

隐喻是人类将某一领域的经验用来说明或理解另一类领域的经验的一种认知活动,语言中的隐喻正是这种认知活动的反映和手段之一。隐喻与文化息息相关,是文化研究、尤其是价值观研究的重要途径。文章通过对比英汉两种语言中隐喻表达式的异同,试图揭示隐喻与文化模式之间的关系,探讨隐喻在跨文化交际中的作用。

Metaphor is defined as a cognitive mechanism whereby one conceptual domain is partially mapped onto a different domain, the second domain being partially understood in terms of the first one, with the linguistic metaphor deriving from those domains. Metaphor is closely related to culture and is an important way to study cul- ture, especially the value system. The paper first makes a contrastive study of metaphorical linguistic expressions both in English and in Chinese indicating the underlying temporal and emotional metaphors, and then explores the relationship between metaphor and cultural models and the role of metaphor in cross-cultural understanding.