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Part of
Cultural-Linguistic Explorations into Spirituality, Emotionality, and Society
Edited by Hans-Georg Wolf, Denisa Latić and Anna Finzel
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 14] 2021
► pp. 213–236

Culture-specific elaborations in cross-linguistic studies of metaphors

Comparing life is a journey in Chinese and British English

| National Sun Yat-sen University

Metaphorical mappings are often shaped by socio-cultural backgrounds of the speakers (Musolff, 2015; Su, 2002; Yu & Jia, 2016). In the present corpus study that compares Chinese and British English metaphors, the metaphor life is a journey specifically – ubiquitous in both languages – is found to have different elaborations. The concepts of difficulty and purpose are highlighted in Chinese metaphors, while change and progress are more salient in British English. From a cultural perspective, the preoccupation of Chinese societies with a goal-oriented life could have contributed to such differences. Beyond that, journey, the source domain from which ideas are drawn, is itself perceived in distinct ways in these two cultural contexts/speech communities. Discrete evaluations and attitudes are reflected in the metaphorical representations of life, which are mapped according to culture-specific assumptions about journey. The inextricable relations between source-internal, target-induced, and context-dependent aspects have all contributed to the diversity of conceptual metaphors.

Keywords: life is a journey metaphor, event structure metaphor, Chinese, British English, corpus linguistics, cultural model
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cultural variations and their causes
  • 3. life is a journey in Chinese and British English
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5. life is a journey in Chinese and British English
    • 5.1 states are locations/objects
    • 5.2 means are paths
    • 5.3 purpose of life is reaching the end of the path
    • 5.4 difficulties are counterforces
    • 5.5 changes and progress are movements
    • 5.6 actions and causes are forces
    • 5.7 roles in life are roles on a journey
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.14.10hua
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