英汉动物习语的差异开题报告

Some animal-related idioms are similar in meaning in English and Chinese, but some have totally different meanings. So what are the differences and rules in meaning of animal idioms in English and Chinese? This has attracted the interest of many of our scholars. At present, the study of animal idioms involves a lot, mainly in the following aspects.

Bo Jingshan “Compares the cultural connotations of animal words in Chinese and English”, and puts forward that due to the influence of many cultural factors such as history, customs, values and religious beliefs, animal words are endowed with their own specific cultural connotations in Both Chinese and English.

Jiang Yan and Cao Ning put forward the influence of thinking mode. Animal survival and natural factors related, even the same animal in different environment for survival, people also have different ways of thinking brought about by the feeling and mood is not always the same, so the meaning expressed by the composed of animal idioms in both English and Chinese languages and both have something in common, and each has his strong point.

Based on the study of The Bible, Aesop's Fables and the Chinese zodiac, Liu Chang, with the help of relevant theories of language pragmatics, tries to make some discussion on the cultural differences between English and Chinese animal idioms. He noted that the Chinese astronomical cycle of alternating heat and cold has the most typical effect on the animals of the Chinese zodiac. In English, The Bible, Aesop's Fables and ancient Greek and Roman mythology are the three main factors influencing the development of Western culture. Most animal idioms in English come from The Bible and Aesop's Fables.

Chen Qi and Wang Yan mentioned conceptual meaning and connotative meaning, and believed that conceptual meaning is the basic meaning expressed in verbal communication, as well as the core element. The conceptual meaning of words is generally stable and unchanged. Connotative meaning is the meaning attached to the concept meaning. It can vary with people, age, society, country or era. So the connotative meaning is unstable. Due to the differences of different nationalities in geography, religion, folk customs, values and other aspects, words expressing the same concept will inevitably have different meanings under the influence of their respective cultural traditions. In a particular context, people will have a certain sense of the same word. It is not difficult to understand the different meanings of animal idioms in English and Chinese.

To sum up, many scholars have mentioned that many cultural factors, such as history, customs, values and religious beliefs, have influenced the different meanings of animal idioms in English and Chinese, and have listed many animal idioms to compare their meanings. In addition, there are also many examples to illustrate the use of context. Therefore, to grasp the different meanings of animal idioms in English and Chinese, it is necessary to understand these cultural factors. But from the animal idioms how to extend the different meanings, the above article does not go into more in-depth analysis.

Reviewed Zhao Hong’s An English–Chinese Contrastive Study of Lexical Motivation, this article mentioned "metonymy and metaphor thinking is underlying mechanism and driving force for the extension of the meaning of words", therefore, from the theory to analyze the different meaning in animal idioms in English and Chinese language, to understand its mechanism, can be more thorough understanding of their origin, so that we can quickly understand the meaning of them.

At present, the author is able to rarely collect the relevant animal idioms in English and Chinese differences in foreign academic literature. However, there are still a lot of literature on animal idioms in British and American languages. Many of documents are from the perspective of cognitive linguistics to analyze the mechanism of animal idioms. Typical example is Nguyen Thi Nhu Ngoc and Vu Thi Huyen Hong analyzed Animal idioms in English from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, and applied the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics, which fully explained the mechanism of animal idioms. The conceptual metaphor theory is first proposed by Lakoff and Johnson, who argue that "the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another", this point of view give us a direction for analyzing animal idioms. 

Therefore, the different meanings of animal idioms between English and Chinese can be better understood by starting with the metaphor concept.

B. Outline

1 Introduction

2 Literature Review

2.1 Overview of Western and Eastern cultures animal Idioms

3 The difference of animal idioms in English and Chinese

3.1 Comparison of the Differences between Animal cultures of the East and the West

3.2 The effect of different influence factors of Eastern and Western culture

4 Metonymy and metaphor thinking

4.1 The mechanism of Metonymy and metaphor

4.2 Analysis for animal idioms in English and Chinese

5 Conclusion