Mengqi Liu,Fan Lyu

Metaphor, as a rhetoric device, has a broad application. This paper compares the metaphorical meaning of nouns of locality in Chinese and English through analysis of their usage in literature, art and everyday use and finds out the similarities and differences of the metaphorical meaning in two languages in the four major nouns of locality, north, south, west and east. The paper finds that apart from telling directions, nouns of locality also function as a way of describing meteorological phenomena and telling sequence in time. Findings of this paper offer readers a glimpse of the cultural differences behind the two languages.

metaphor; nouns of locality; comparative analysis; Chinese; English

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