A Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis of Emotion Metaphors of Fear in Chinese and English

As one of the most important concepts in cognitive linguistics, emotion metaphor refers to a kind of linguistic phenomenon in which abstract emotions are conceptualized by metaphors based on human beings' own experience in the process of perceiving and understanding the world. To study this phenomenon in details, this paper selects one of the basic human emotions of fear as an instance to compare and contrast the differences and similarities in the conceptualizations as well as elaborations of shared conceptual metaphors in English and Chinese. In order to explain this topic clearly, this paper makes full use of corpus method to analyse the different expressions of fear in Chinese and English, and makes a thorough study of multiple types of fear metaphors. In accordance with embodiment of cognitive linguistics, the similar physical activities/responses and life experiences of human beings result in the commonness of the emotion metaphors of fear in English and Chinese, while the differences of external factors such as culture, tradition and environment also lead to the differences between the two languages. Grasping the similarities and differences between English and Chinese emotion metaphors is of great significance to the understanding of the way we perceive the world, and to the expression of our feelings through metaphors.