Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Love Proverbs from the Perspective of Ontological Metaphor

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, the communication among diverse cultures has grown rapidly, which brings more opportunities to people in all countries who can have mutual understandings and then fall in an international love. Nevertheless, as an abstract conception, love in different countries has metaphorical expressions basically. Therefore, the development of international love could be influenced by misunderstanding caused by cultural differences. The paper makes a contrastive analysis of Chinese and English love proverbs from the perspective of ontological metaphor. The result proves that it has further the cultural, economic and environmental reasons, as for the abstract conception of ‘love’, that the similarities and difference of Chinese and English nations’ cognition, thus enriching recognitions and comprehensions about “love” between these two nations and eliminating communication misunderstandings from cultural difference to a certain extent.