摘要
This paper investigates STRAIGHT image schema and its metaphorical extensions in Chinese and English in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics.Our central goal is to highlight the important role of embodied and cultural elements on the meaning formation.By observing the corpus data,we find three common variations both in Chinese and English,namely,STRAIGHT-PATH,STRAIGHT-LINK,STRAIGHT-OBJECT,and one characterized variation in Chinese,STRAIGHT-SCALE.The ratio of metaphorical usage of zhi in Chinese is higher than that of straight in English while straight enjoys a wider metaphorical extension than zhi.The findings suggest that although bodily experience serves as the general cognitive basis for the formation of image schema and its metaphorical extensions,cultural elements contribute to the language-specific preference.
