Cross-Cultural Variation Of Conceptual Metaphors In Russian And Chinese

Abstract

This article is devoted to cross-cultural variation of the WAR conceptual metaphor in Russian and Chinese languages, the main purpose is to clarify the mental concept of WAR in two cultures. The research methodology is based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the conceptual mapping method, which allows to analyze, and to calculate the perception level of conceptual metaphor speech forms. To conduct research 6 most common source domains were identified for one target domain of WAR, and for each source domain 4 sentences with metaphor within were compiled. It became the material for the survey of Russian and Chinese military personnel, who were asked to mark each sentence according to personal linguistic sense as complying the language norm or not. The results indicate rather significant differences in conceptual understanding of the war phenomenon between two nations. Besides, during the study, it was possible to identify the stability of each metaphorical model. To do this, a special indicator is introduced in the article - the dispersion of the conceptual metaphor, which is calculated by comparing the level of perception of the implicit level of the metaphor, which expressed in specific sentences, and the explicit level, that is the metaphorical model according to principle A - this B. The study showed that for Chinese culture there are no problematic issues related to the understanding of warfare and its nature, while in Russian culture, the comprehension of war in some source domains is extremely unstable.