Abstract: As primitive men originally express the objective world by means of their own body, body metaphor has become the most common source of metaphorical thinking and the most essential branch among so many metaphorical phenomena. This paper aims to study English and Chinese body metaphors from cultural perspective. The similarities and diversities of bodily metaphorical expressions and the cause of being so will be focused and discussed. Through the analysis, the author came to the conclusion that it is both body parts and culture factors that shape body metaphorical expressions in English and Chinese languages. Though there exist both similarity and diversity between English and Chinese body metaphors, their similarity outweighs their diversity. 

Key words： body metaphor; cultural difference; similarity; diversity

摘要：原始人类最初是通过人体来表达客观世界的，因而人体是隐喻思维最常见的来源。在众多的隐喻现象中最基本的莫过于人体隐喻。本文旨在透过文化视角研究英汉人体隐喻，重在讨论英汉人体隐喻的相似性与差异性及其产生的原因。通过分析，笔者得出结论：英汉语言中人体隐喻的表达是由人体部分和文化因素所共同决定的。尽管英汉人体隐喻存在异同，其同大于异。

关键词：人体隐喻；文化差异；相似性；差异性