A Study of “Hand” Metaphors in English and Chinese—Cognitive and Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Our ordinary conceptual system by means of which we live, think and act is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Human body undoubtedly has been the most important cognitive status in human being’s cognition. This paper studies the metaphor concerning hand as a source domain on the basis of linguistic evidence. It seeks to find out the differences and the similarities between English “hand” metaphors and Chinese “hand” metaphors, then to explore the causes of the universality and variations from cognitive and cultural perspectives. This paper will, to a certain degree, be helpful to the vocabulary and rhetoric teaching in English and Chinese.