Abstract:

Plant is an integral part of human life. People are accustomed to using plant metaphors to express human features and appearance. Therefore, there are numerous plant expressions existing in English and Chinese. Plant metaphor, as an important part of metaphors, serves as a tool to construct concepts. Owing to the cultural differences, plant metaphor means differently in different context. In order to better guide and promote the cross-cultural communication, this paper firstly collects a large number of plant metaphors in English and Chinese, then analyzes them from the cultural perspective and summarizes the similarities and differences of them. Finally, this paper points out that understanding the metaphor can not be separated out of the historical and cultural environment .

Key words: plant metaphors; conceptual metaphors; cross-culture; contrastive study

摘要：

植物是人类生活中不可或缺的一部分,人们习惯用植物隐喻来表达人的特点和外观,因此在中英文中存在着大量的植物表达。植物隐喻是隐喻的重要组成部分，同时也是构建概念的工具。然而，由于文化差异，植物隐喻在不同的语言环境中意思也不尽相同。为了更好地指导和促进跨文化交际，本文首先收集了大量的中英文植物隐喻，然后从文化的角度对其进行分析并总结出它们的异同点。最后，本文还指出隐喻的正确理解是不能脱离历史和文化环境。

关键词：植物隐喻；概念隐喻；跨文化；对比研究

1. Introduction
Metaphor was firstly proposed by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. Since its birth, it has received constant attention in recent centuries. According to Richard’s statistical data, metaphor touches every aspect of our life and there is a metaphor in every three sentences on average. People make frequent use of metaphor in the daily life. Therefore, Metaphor is an important tool or way for human beings to describe the world, to explore the unknown fields, and to perceive the familiar or unfamiliar objects.
Plant is an indispensable object in the nature and human life. It has a very close relationship with humans forever. They are often used by people to describe the world and persuasive in people’s daily language and life. As a result, there are numerous plant expressions in English and Chinese. Most of them have metaphorical meanings. Plant metaphor, as an important part of metaphors, serves as a tool to construct concepts.