英语论文网

nd’s northeast, famous for coal exportation.[24] Secondly, metaphors reflect traditional culture and values. People in different nations have different ways of life, thinking, culture and mentalities. As shown above, metaphor and culture have close relations. Through metaphor, people can well understand the objective world. And metaphor, to some extent, reflects and determines the shaping of a nation’s culture and values. It is because that when people make metaphors on certain images, their views of culture and values must be manifested in these metaphors consciously or unconsciously. For example, in Chinese culture the pine, the bamboo and the plum are called three gentlemen in winter. Because the three of them can survive the extremely cold winter and remain vital. For Chinese, they represent a noble spirit. While in English culture, they are just three common plants and cannot give people any association. People in Chinese and English culture have different understanding of color. For example (3), “red” is the kind of color Chinese admire and has the meaning of luck, success, faithfulness and wealth, etc. This phenomenon can be explained from the angle of culture. In Chinese culture, Chinese special admiration for red originates from people’s worship and desire for the sun in ancient times. And our forebears’ attachment for the red sunshine is native. Therefore the positive meaning represented by red naturally comes into being. For example, in ancient times, the house, the clothes, and the carts the influential officials lived in , wore and sat in were respectively called “朱门”, “朱衣”, “朱轩”.In modern times, people use “分红” to refer to the profits distributed to the business cooperators. On the contrary, in English culture, red is a negative word. Because red is also the color of blood, and in the mind of English, blood is the liquid of life, once one bleeds, the flower of life will soon wither. Therefore, they often associate “red” with “violence” and “danger”. Then there are “the red rules of tooth and claw”, “red revenge”, “a red battle”, “red hand” etc.[25] All of these expressions show that red is a kind of unlucky color in English culture. Besides, because of traditional cultural differences, metaphors on love in Chinese and English are entirely different. For example (4), in both Chinese and English, there is a metaphorical concept——“Love is a journey”(爱情是旅程). Then English say “we cannot turn back now”; in Chinese, there is a similar expression: “我们再也回不去了”《十八春》（张爱玲）. However, the connotations of these two expressions are completely opposite. In the former, love is compared to journey metaphorically, which means that lovers must overcome the difficulties in the love journey together, otherwise they cannot maintain their love. What the expression emphasizes is the determination that lovers strive shoulder by shoulder. While in the latter, the expression implies the speaker’s confusion. Though the lovers regret for their departing love, they cannot go back like before any more.[26] Thirdly, some metaphors have historical and cultural backgrounds. In both Chinese and English, there are many expressions implying rich historical and cultural backgrounds and produce various associations. For example (5), in Chinese, we say “说曹操，曹操就到”, “暗渡陈仓”, “东施效颦”, “卧薪尝胆”, “负荆请罪”, “四面楚歌”. Each of these allusions and idioms contains a great deal of historical and cultural information. While English say “meet one’s Waterloo