Conceptual Metaphors of “风 (Wind)” and “雨 (Rain)” in English and Chinese Idioms: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study

Abstract

This study, framed within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, systematically examines and analyzes the metaphorical expressions of “风 (wind)”, “雨 (rain)”, and “风雨 (wind and rain)” in English and Chinese idioms. The Chinese language data for this study primarily originates from Modern Chinese dictionary and the BCC corpus, while the English language data is predominantly sourced from the COCA corpus. Through a comprehensive comparative analysis, the following conclusions are drawn: regarding the metaphorical expressions of the “风 (wind)” , both English and Chinese languages predominantly exhibit similarities, demonstrating a characteristic of “differences within similarities”; in contrast, the metaphorical expressions of the “雨 (rain)” is not as rich as that of the “风 (wind)”, and the majority of metaphorical expressions manifest differences between English and Chinese, reflecting a “similarity within differences” pattern. The metaphorical expressions of the “风雨 (wind and rain)” show uniqueness in Chinese and an absence in English. This study suggests that the target domain of meteorological metaphorical terms can be broadly categorized into three aspects: (1) the natural target domain, (2) the social target domain, and (3) the psychological target domain. In English and Chinese languages, the similarities of meteorological metaphorical terms is mainly observed in the natural domain, whereas differences are primarily evident in the psychological domain, with fewer differences in the social domain.