Conceptual Metaphors of “Cold†from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of English and Chinese

Abstract

Metaphor as a kind of cognitive mechanism closely relates to the thinking methods and is a cognitive process of understanding a new concept in terms of experience and knowledge. This paper, with the research method of English and Chinese corpus, and on the basis of the conceptual metaphor theory from Lakoff and Johnson, analyzes and compares the differences in the conceptual metaphors of “cold†and illustrated the reasons. The research finds that similarities and differences of metaphors coexist and its metaphorical mapping mostly focuses on the emotion and attitude domain, psychological domain, processing domain, and war domain. Not only does Chinese “cold†have more metaphorical meanings than English “coldâ€, but also it covers a wider metaphorical scope. The results of the research are useful to exploit the relationship among word meaning, and expose the hidden cognitive mechanism, which help understand conceptual metaphors.