中英文时间概念隐喻的跨文化对比

隐喻不仅仅是一种语言修辞手段，更是一种思维方式和认知方式。“隐喻无处不在，人类的整个概念系统都是建立在隐喻基础之上的”( Lakoff&Johnson1980:3)。时间是一种非常抽象的概念，其认知通常必须借助隐喻，即通过人们熟悉的、具体的思想或概念去理解和表达复杂的、抽象的或不那么确定的概念。
本文正是在这一理论背景下，对英汉两种语言中的时间隐喻进行比较研究。研究表明，一方面，中英文在时间概念隐喻中都有相似的模型。如，时间是运动的物体，时间是有价值的东西，时间是改变者，等等。另一方面，时间隐喻在英汉两种语言中也存在差异。在英语中，“前”表示“将来”，“后”表示“过去”，而汉语中“前”除了表示“将来”，有时也表示“过去”，“后”除了表示“过去”，有时也可表示“将来”，如“前天、后天”。在英语中，“上”可以表示“过去”和“将来”，“下”也可表示“将来”和“过去”;在汉语中，“上”表示“过去”，“下”表示“将来”。认知语言学认为，导致这些异同的主要原因是认知的普遍性和文化的相对性。
本文一反隐喻理论的传统观念，从认知的角度对时间隐喻力图作了较为全面的论述，特别是通过大量英汉对比，进一步证实和发展了当代隐喻理论。本文对深入了解隐喻与文化，隐喻与思维的关系，进而全面了解人类认知过程也有主要意义。
关键词：对比， 时间概念隐喻， 认知
Abstract

Metaphor is not only a rhetoric device but a way for thinking and cognition. "It (metaphor) is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”(Lakoff&Johnson1980:3) Time is abstract and intangible concept, so we must comprehend it by the projection or mapping of concepts from relatively familiar and concrete domains onto it.
The present thesis attempts to further cross-cultural studies in cognitive linguistics by giving a comparison of time conceptual metaphor in English and Chinese. On one hand, it is found that in both Chinese and English, there are universal models for time, for instance, time is moving entities, time is valuable things, time is changer. On the other hand, there are also differences of time conceptual metaphors in these two languages. On the horizontal axis, the "front" refers to the "future" and the "back" the past in English; while in Chinese,“前”，besides denoting the "future", sometimes refers to the "past", and“后”，besides denoting the "past", sometimes refers to the "future", as in the examples like“前天”，“后天”. On the vertical axis, "up" refers to "past" or "future", and "down" refers to "future" or "past" in English; while in Chinese,“上”refers to "past", and“下”refers to  "future". Cognitive linguistics believes that these similarities and differences can be explained by cognitive universality and cultural relativity. 
 The present thesis is an attempt to make a relatively complete and detailed study on time conceptual metaphors between English and Chinese, from the cognitive perspective instead of the traditional view of metaphor, which reinforces and develops some theories of the contemporary metaphor. This study sheds new light on understanding the relation between metaphor and culture, as well as metaphor and thought, which will be significant for understanding the process of human cognition.
Key words: comparison， time conceptual metaphor， cognition

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