A Contrastive Analysis of Emotional Metaphors “Joy (Happiness)” and “Anger” in Chinese and English

Abstract

In today’s society, emotion is considered as the central and most pervasive aspect of human experience (Zoltan Kovecses, 1986). Thus, how to conceptualize emotion is always an issue of concern. According to the contemporary theories, metaphor is a matter of people’s thought and reason. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) As it is an important cognitive tool, it reveals how people perceive unfamiliar, abstract concepts via familiar, concrete ones on the basis of bodily experience. (Wu Shixiong George, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to study how “joy” and “anger”, two basic and extreme emotional concepts are metaphorized in English and Chinese from a cognitive perspective. Furthermore, it looks in depth at the similarities and differences between English and Chinese metaphors about “joy” and “anger”.