A Contrastive Study of Temporal-Spacial Metaphors in English, French and Chinese

Abstract

Due to the intangibility and abstractness of time, people from different cultures, though with disparate views on time and space, are universally inclined to project spacial metaphors on temporal concepts. Nonetheless, most research has put more emphasis on the bilingual contrastive study than the multilingual one, leaving the generalizability of their research findings questioned. Guided by Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor theory, this paper analyzes both static and dynamic temporal-spacial metaphors in English, French and Chinese with both lexicographical data and corpora data as proof. Moreover, through contrasting the six image schematic concepts in the three languages, namely, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, FORNT, and BACK, this paper notices the most conspicuous disparages between the three languages exist in their vertical and horizontal representations of temporal-spacial metaphors. Additionally, through comparison, this paper unveils the similarity of the three languages with regard to their use of both the moving-ego, the moving-time and the temporal-sequence models in their metaphorical systems.