한·중 개념적 은유 비교 연구

A Comparative Study of Language Reflected in Korean and Chinese Conceptual Metaphors: Focusing on the source domain of Rain

This paper is an attempt to make a comparative study on metaphorical uses of rain in Korean and Chinese on the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and to analyze the reasons according to language cultural causes. In Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought and action. According to conceptual metaphor theory, the source domain is typically more concrete than the other for the purpose of understanding human concepts. Rain, one of the important natural phenomenon closely related to human’s daily life, is often made use of to depict abstract situations man faced or explain human concepts metaphorically. It hopes a better understanding of the metaphors about rain between Korean and Chinese, and pursuit of the best understanding of the language·cultural differences. The results are as follows: First, in the universality of metaphorical uses of rain, in Korean and Chinese, according to the perceptual similarity between the source and target domain, the target domain is substance, but by the cognitive similarity, the target domain is abstract phenomenon. Second, in the speciality, there is a different cognition of the source domain[Rain]. And the properties of the source domain about the foreground/background properties showed the difference between Korean and Chinese. In the mapping process, the direction of rain is one of the selected attributes in Korean, but it‘s the necessary one in Chinese. Third, The reason for the universality of metaphorical uses of rain, in Korean and Chinese can be explained by the similar bodily experience of rain shared by the Korean and the Chinese. As for the motivations for the speciality, different social cultural experience, including physical environment (geography and climate), cultural context, and differential memory(myth and historical events) is taken into account. It is also revealed that human’s cognition is formed by experience, and human will have different experience depending on language culture.