Abstract: According to contemporary theories, metaphor is related to people's thought . It is an important cognitive tool and a mapping between two domains, and it reflects how people perceive unfamiliar, abstract concepts via familiar, concrete ones on the basis of bodily experience. This paper overcomes the weakness of traditional approaches in confining metaphors to the rhetorical field. Grounded on the contrastive analysis of a large amount of linguistic data of emotional words “happiness” and “anger” from English and Chinese, the present study supports and develops the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor from the domain of emotions: abstract concepts like human emotions are largely comprehended and expressed through metaphors; emotion metaphors are rooted in bodily experience and are influenced by cultural models as well, namely, conceptual metaphors of emotions are characterized by cognitive commonness and cultural diversity. It is hoped that this paper will provide implications for the areas of cross-cultural communication and emotional words learning in foreign languages.

Key words: conceptual metaphor; happiness; anger; cognition

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction1

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 Previous Studies on English Emotional Metaphors

2.2 Previous Studies on Chinese Emotional Metaphors

3.Theoretical Framework 3

3.1 Definition of Conceptual Metaphor

3.2 Classifications of Conceptual Metaphors

4.Similarities of English and Chinese Emotional Words— “Happiness” and “Anger” .5

4.1 From the Perspective of Orientational Metaphors

4.2 From the Perspective of Structural Metaphors

4.3 From the Perspective of Container Metaphors

5.Differences of English and Chinese Emotional Words— “Happiness” and “Anger” 9

5.1 Differences of “Happiness” Conceptual Metaphors

5.2 Differences of “Anger” Conceptual Metaphors

6. Conclusion.13

Bibliography14

Acknowledgements.15