The Cognitive Analysis of Human Body Wordstake “head”, “hand”, “mouth”, “heart” and “face” as examples人体部位词的认知分析.doc

人体部位词的认知分析 以头、手、口、心、脸为例The Cognitive Analysis of Human Body Wordstake “head”, “hand”, “mouth”, “heart” and “face” as examples摘要【摘要】本文以五个人体词汇-头，手，口，心，脸为主要研究对象，以概念隐喻和图式为理论框架，采用对比分析的方法，试图找出人体词汇的认知特点和在英汉两种语言中存在人体词汇认知上的不同的原因。本文发现，人体词的认知对于人类认知整个世界至关重要。此外，各个民族拥有相似的生理结构，所以在对人体词的认知上存在许多相似性。但是，各个民族在地理位置、文化和语言方面存在差异，所以在对人体词的认知上也存在许多不同点。本文的语料来源于权威词典和相关研究者的著作，如Lakoff (1980), 束定芳（2000）等。【关键词】概念隐喻；图式；认知; 人体词。The Cognitive Analysis of Human Body Words: take “head”, “hand”, “mouth”, “heart” and “face” as examplesAbstract【ABSTRACT】This thesis chooses five human body wordshead, hand, mouth, heart and face as the subject of the research. Within the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor and schema, the thesis conducts a contrastive analysis and attempts to investigate the cognitive features of human body words and find out the similarities and differences of cognitive features of human body words in English and Chinese. Besides, the physiological structures of people of every nation are more or less the same, which leads to many similarities in their cognitions of human body words. And because of the differences in geographic location, culture and language typology among different nations, there are many differences in their cognition of human body words. The data cited in this thesis are collected from authoritative dictionaries, relevant researchers works, such as Lakoff (1980), Su Dingfang (2000) and so on.【KEYWORDS】conceptual metaphor；schema；cognition; human body words.Contents诚 信 承 诺I摘要IIAbstractIIIContentsIV1 Introduction11.1 The Significance of the Research11.2 The Theoretical Framework11.3 The Organization of the Thesis22 Literature Review32.1 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body Words32.1.1 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body Words in Chinese32.1.2 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body Words in English32.2 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body Words42.2.1 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body Words in Chinese42.2.2 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body Words in English43 Conceptual Metaphor and Schema Concerning Human Body Words53.1 Conceptual Metaphors Concerning Human Body Words53.1.1 Head53.1.2 Hand63.1.3 Mouth63.1.4 Heart73.1.5 Face83.2 Image Schema Concerning Human Body Words83.2.1 Containment Schema93.2.2 Balance Schema93.2.3 Human Body Schema93.3 Summary104 Similarities and Differences in Human Body Words Metaphor in Chinese and English114.1 Similarities114.1.1 Similarities of Human Body Parts Positions114.1.2 Similarities of Human Body Parts Shapes114.1.3 Similarities of Human Body Parts Functions114.2 Differences124.2.1 Features of Body Metaphor from Geographic Locations124.2.2 Features of Body Metaphor from a Linguistic View124.2.3 Features of Body Metaphor from Different Cultures and Personalities134.3 Summary145 Conclusion155.1 Main Findings155.2 Limitations15References16Acknowledgements171 IntroductionThe cognition from the near to the far, from entity to non-entity, from the simple to the complicated, from the concrete to the abstract, just makes up the basis of humans realization of the world. So there are many human body words turning up. This thesis uses conceptual metaphor and schema to make a cognitive analysis of these words-head, hand, mouth, heart, and face. The aim is to reveal their cognitive features.1.1 The Significance of the ResearchCommonly, people treat metaphor as a special rhetoric way. However, with the development of cognitive science, gradually people notice that metaphor is not only a rhetoric way but also a cognitive method around us. Human beings always use their bodies to cognize the world, describe the world and express the emotion because inevitably, people will connect the cognition of human body with other things. With metaphorical concepts, human body words acquire many new meanings to describe other things on the basis of some daily experiences. Through the research of human body words with conceptual metaphor and schema: (1) We can develop the research of metaphor and schema of human body word. These human body parts which are used in language can be nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on. So people should open up eyesight, make further research about human body adjectives and human body verbs.(2) On the basis of our elementary knowledge about our bodies, we can make an exploration about the linguistic function of human body metaphor and schema. It is very crucial about the language expression, language realization and language teaching.(3) Human body metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a cognitive phenomenon, so the research about metaphor will be the research about different cultures and the diversity of different languages.1.2 The Theoretical FrameworkIn this part, the theories which are used in the thesis will be introduced: conceptual metaphor and schema.Metaphor was firstly brought out about two thousand years ago. Aristotle mentioned metaphor in the rhetoric education and he just considered metaphor as the imagery between two similar things or nouns that made the language more vivid. With the theory deepening, after the 1970s, Lakoff and Johnson deepened the metaphor theory. Goossens (1995) launched a succession of contrastive research of metaphor and metonymy. And in Su Dingfangs research (2000), metaphor had two significant effects on humans cognition ability. One effect is creating new meanings; the other is providing new ways to cognize things. People make use of the correlation between two things to put new conceptions and the sources together then find out the same points among them.Schema was firstly brought out by Immanuel Kant (cited in Chen Qian, 2008) who was a philosopher from Germany. He defined schema as something hidden in humans soul. So according to Kant, schema in some degree can be used for forecasting. According to traditional experience, we can find out the relationship between different things and get new conceptions from lots of research and practice. But Kant never simply compared the experience with ability, he found out the relationship between experience and ability, and defined the cognitive ability as “the clue of all the pure conception”, which is the tiptop principle of all analyses. In this cognitive process, schema is a very important part. Schema is based on humans experience or knowledge of things. Lakoff (1987) defined the image schema as “comparatively simple, the structures which are very common in our daily life”. Such as container, route, connection, power, balance, or the relations between some direction words, updown, frontbehind, partwhole, centeredge.1.3 The Organization of the ThesisThere are five parts in this thesis. In Chapter One, an introduction of the whole thesis is given so that the reader could have a clear view of the thesis. In Chapter Two, the literature review about this thesis is given. Also, some scholars opinion about conceptual metaphor and schema about human body words are listed. In Chapter Three, five human body words are analyzed within the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor and schema. Chapter Four which is based on Chapter Three explores the similarities and differences of cognition in terms of metaphor and schema about human body words in Chinese and English and attempt to detect the reasons for similarities and differences. In Chapter Five, the conclusions of the whole thesis are given after the analyses.2 Literature ReviewThis chapter is divided into two parts. One part is about the research of conceptual metaphor of human body words, the other is about the research of schema of human body words. 2.1 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body WordsA metaphor is the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity or correlation between the two. There are so many scholars both in Chinese and English engaged in the study of conceptual metaphor of human body words. In this part, the research background of conceptual metaphor will be introduced.2.1.1 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body Words in ChineseThe research of conceptual metaphor of human body words in Chinese focuses on each part of the human body to study the metaphor. Many scholars who were interested in metaphorical studies such as Xiao Ling (2007), Su Dingfang (2000), Wang Wenbin (2001), wrote many books and articles about human body words in terms of metaphor.Xiao Ling (2007) assumed that the formation of metaphor is based on peoples experience. Metaphor not only falls into the category of rhetoric, but also a cognitive phenomenon. In daily life, the metaphor of human body is based on mapping, which determines the basic role of body parts in cognizing the world.In Su Dingfangs research (2000), he gave a general introduction of metaphor theory and makes a comprehensive analysis about the metaphors occurrence, working system, essence and functions.In Wang Wenbins research (2001), he took the word “heart” for example, investigates the mental structures of spatial metaphorization of “xin” (heart) in Chinese. He points out that the multi-dimensional spatial metaphorization of “xin” in Chinese shows that the Chinese people structurally cognize “xin” in the way of unity of opposites.2.1.2 Researches of Conceptual Metaphor Concerning Body Words in EnglishLakoff and Johnson (1980) divided metaphor into structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor in their book Metaphors We Live By. Human body metaphor belongs to ontological metaphor. In peoples mind, the most familiar thing is just the human body. So when people are realizing other things, they will firstly focus on own body. Having found out the similarities between own body and other things, they tend to use human body words to describe other things.Rousseau and Herder (1986) in their book On the Origin of Language elaborated the origin of language on the basis of peoples experience and cognition. Human body words are easily mapped to other domains. As the entity, human body parts have characteristics such as length, width, height, structure, shape and function. So people could connect these human body parts with other things all over the world. For example, “head of mountain” can be used to express the meaning of the top of a mountain. This example points out that human being always use his/her body parts to describe something that has the same feature as them. It is a cognitive process.2.2 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body WordsSchema plays an important role in our thinking, which makes it possible for us to experience, understand and reason our world, and so many scholars have researched it both in English and Chinese.2.2.1 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body Words in ChineseHu chun (2004) had researched about human body schema and finds that human body schema is often used as the source to form the complicated concepts, most of which is abstract such as social relationship. It is used very automatically, unconsciously. He also pointed out that there must be a set of correspondence between the source domain and the target domain. He analyzed many examples such as “手足/brothers and sisters”, “头儿/leader or boss of a group” in order to prove the findings mentioned above.And for Xun miao (2008), his idea more or less was similar with that of Hu chun that schema plays an important role in the understanding of other complex concepts. In other words, schema is very important for us to use human body as the source domain to describe something more complicated. But this kind of mapping only happens under the condition that we have basic experience about human body. To make the statement more vivid, we can treat the human bodythe source domain as the mother while the target domain as the son, so schema happens in the pregnancy.2.2.2 Researches on Schema Concerning Human Body Words in EnglishAccording to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), our minds come into being with the help of schema. So schema is a basic mode of human cognition. When we see an entity, we will divide it into many elementary schemata. Lakoff (1987) had pointed out that schema support very important evidence for “metaphorical projections from concrete to abstract domains”. In addition, Lakoff (1987) considered that metaphor is based on schema. Metaphorical mappings are caused by, or based on our daily experience. Schema is very important for us to cognize the abstract world as well as a very important part of mapping process from source domain which is concrete to target domain which is abstract. And human body to some extent belongs to source domain, so sometimes schema builds the connection between the experience we know about our body and other abstract concepts.3 Conceptual Metaphor and Schema Concerning Human Body Words3.1 Conceptual Metaphors Concerning Human Body WordsBoth in Chinese and English, there are many words, phrases, or idioms that are related to body parts and most of them share some kinds of metaphorical usage. The thesis will analyze five human body wordshead, hand, mouth, heart and face which locate at the upper part of human body with conceptual metaphor in this chapter.3.1.1 HeadAmong all human body parts, “head” which is at the top of human body is one of the most important parts, including many important sensory parts like face, mouth, eyes, ears, etc. Besides, it is the origin of thinking, the container of knowledge. “Head” can also mean “the first”, “the beginning of some things” and “the leader of a group or organization”. We can find many expressions of “head” with metaphor both in Chinese and English. One important function of “head” is thinking. It controls bodys action, peoples thinking and feeling. A metaphorical mapping happens from the source domain (head) to the target domain (thinking and feeling). For example, put heads together means “collect ideas or wisdom”. He is weak in head means “he is stupid”. Somebody has a head on his/her should means “someone is rich of experience and skillful of doing something”. In a word, under this condition, “head” refers to “thinking ability, mind, and other things which are similar to them”.As mentioned above, “head” can mean “the first”, such as 首富/the richest, 榜首/the first of the list, 首要/of the first importance, 首倡/start, etc. In these phrases, the source domain is “head” while the target domain is something with the meaning of the first; it is all because of the unique position in human body.“Head” also can mean “the start of things”, such as 开头/initial stage, 首尾难顾/The beginning is hard to respond to the ending, 打头阵/fight