语言即世界——从认知的角度看汉英相关隐喻

Language Is World——A cognitive look at relevant Chinese and English metaphors

隐喻是人们认识世界的方式,其本质在于将熟悉或具体的认知域概念映射到陌生或抽象的认知域中,产生新的概念,借以把握陌生或抽象的事物。文章基于认知语言学的隐喻理论,考察了隐喻"语言即世界"在汉英语言中的具体表现,发现汉、英民族基于类似的生活体验,常常将语言视为空间、物质和人,将语言视为与人们日常生活相关的具体事物的隐喻尤其丰富,这些隐喻反映出汉英两个民族基本一致的语言认知观。

Metaphor is the main cognitive means of humankind with its essence being creating new concepts by mapping the familiar or concrete concepts onto unfamiliar or abstract ones. In accordance with the metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics, this paper systematically investigates into the metaphor LANGUAGE IS WORLD in both Chinese and English languages, and finds that both languages are often similarly conceptualized as space, human beings and physical things, with the last type being the most abundant, which reveals the common metaphorical thought shared by both Chinese and English people.