A Contrastive Study of Chinese and English Animal-metaphor Idioms —A Sociolinguistic Perspective

Human beings and animals have been being bound together inextricably, so it is not surprising that there is many a wordand expression about animals in languages, including Chinese and English. Idiom, as one of the important and refined componentparts of language, is also of such kind. This paper attempts to make a contrastive study of similarities and differences between Chi-nese and English animal-metaphor idioms. It also investigates into the causes for similarities and differences between Chinese andEnglish animal-metaphor idioms from a sociolinguistic perspective.