基于概念隐喻理论的英汉语中恐惧情感隐喻的对比研究_英语论文

A Contrastive Study of Metaphorical Expressions of Fear Emotion in English and Chinese

摘要

情感是人类经验中最重要的部分之一，如何理解和概念化情感也是人们所关注的一个重要问题。隐喻几乎存在所有语言中，不仅体现了我们思考问题的方式，而且也是抽象概念得以概念化的工具。本文在恐惧情感隐喻的基础上对英语和汉语开展对比研究。

亚里士多德认为，隐喻是赋予一个事物其它的特性并使之与其他事物产生联系。在基于文献综述的基础上，本文对英汉语中的“恐惧情感”重新进行研究并且探讨出了恐惧情感的性质。分析得出，英汉语中都存在一些相似的“恐惧”概念隐喻，如英汉语中都常常把“恐惧”比作“敌人”，也有“恐惧是容器中的流体”这一概念隐喻之说。但是，英汉语中对恐惧情感的表述也有很大不同。如英语中常把“整个身体”与“恐惧”相联系，而汉语中通常具体到“人体器官”；英语中习惯性用“下地狱”来形容“恐惧”之感，但是汉语中更习惯用“丢了魂”来描述恐惧感；同时，英语中常把“神经”与“恐惧”联系在一起，汉语中则更多使用“胆”。而这些差异主要是由英汉不同的文化传统、宗教以及地理环境引起的，文化环境是影响隐喻研究的一个重要因素。

本文一共分为五个部分，第一部分主要指出了“恐惧情感”的研究背景以及研究目的；第二部分主要是文献综述；第三部分着重对英汉语中的恐惧情感进行了对比研究；第四部分是造成英汉语中“恐惧情感”差异的原因分析；最后一部分是本文的结论。

关键词：情感隐喻；恐惧情感；对比；文化

Abstract

Emotion is one of the most important parts in human experience. How to realize and conceptualize emotion is the issue people care about. Metaphor is the way we think, also the tool for us to conceptualize abstract concepts. It exists in all kinds of languages. This article is going to have a comparative study between English and Chinese on the basis of fear metaphors. 

Started with Aristotle’s view that metaphor aims to give things a name that belongs to something else, this study restudies the fear metaphor and deliberates over the characteristics and types of fear metaphor. After a comprehensive analysis and comparison, it is found that there are some similar conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese. However, “fear” emotion metaphors also show some differences in English and Chinese. English often use the “whole body” to express fear, while Chinese conceptualizes fear as “organs”. What’s more, English often uses “go to the hell” to describe fear, while Chinese usually employs “the loss of soul” to give a description of fear. Also fear is connected with “nerve” in English, but fear is linked to “gall bladder” in Chinese. Several reasons for the differences are also discussed including different tradition, religion, and geographical environment. 

This article can consist of 5 parts. The first part points out the background and purposes of the study of fear emotion; the second part mainly talks about the literature review; the third part is the comparative study of English and Chinese fear metaphors, as well as the induced factors. The last part is the conclusion of the thesis.

Keywords: metaphor  fear emotion  comparison  culture