• YINGQI WU

  Author

Metaphor is an indispensable aspect of cognitive linguistics and it is found in various fields in
our life. The body and bodily experience are potentially important source domains for conceptual
metaphors to construct abstract concepts. Thus a large number of metaphors are from our bodies
or bodily experience such as hand which is a prominent part of human body. This study aims to
classify metaphors of hand in Chinese into structural, orientational and ontological metaphors, to
figure out whether the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) of Lakoff and Johnson (1987) is
applicable to analyze metaphors of hand in Chinese. Following, the comparison of metaphorical
hands between Chinese and English is conducted to see the difference or similarity. This study
shows the metaphorical meanings of Chinese ‘hand’ can be analyzed by the Conceptual
Metaphor Theory (CMT), in which Chinese ‘hand’ is used as conceptual metaphors similar as
English ‘hand’. Meanwhile, there are also differences of metaphorical ‘hand’ existing between
two languages. It is hoped that this paper will be beneficial to metaphorical studies of body
cognitive linguistics.

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