摘要

    在日常生活中人们常常会使用隐喻来表达自己的思想。因为一些类似的生活经验，我们发现，在英汉语言中许多隐喻具有相似性。而不同的文化和思维又使得两种语言的隐喻有着这样、那样的差异性。因此，虽然东西方文化中都有着丰富的动物隐喻现象, 但同一种动物的隐喻却不尽相同。本文以英汉动物隐喻的动物形象为基础，从同形同意，同形异意，异形同意以及形象缺失四个方面，分析其内在的文化差异。同时对英汉动物隐喻异同的文化内涵包括宗教信仰、生活条件、历史进程以及文学因素作出对比分析。本文旨在帮助人们了解和认识不同民族之间的文化传统和风俗习惯，进而促进中西方跨文化交际顺利进行。

关键词：动物隐喻；文化内涵；形象对比；文化差异

Abstract

In our daily life, metaphors are often used to express people’s implied meaning. We find out there are many similarities between Chinese and English metaphors based on our similar life experience. Differences exit as well due to our different culture and thinking. Although both English and Chinese have abundant animal metaphors, the identical animal image has different metaphorical implications. Based on the animal images in English and Chinese metaphorical phenomenon, this paper is to analyse the cultural differences from the following four perspectives: identical animal images with similar meanings; identical animal images with different meanings; different animal images with identical meaning and animal image blanks. Meanwhile, it also discusses the different cultural connotations, which include religious beliefs, living conditions, historical processes and literary factors. This paper is aiming at helping people have a better understanding of different customary cultures and have a more successful cross-cultural communication.
 
Key words: animal metaphor; cultural connotation; image contrast; cultural difference

1 Introduction
Throughout the history of human beings, animals and human beings are interrelated so closely that animals have become an integral part of lives of human beings. There are many parallels between human beings and animals, such as gene, physical appearances, characters, and behaviors, etc. Abundant animal words have been created by human beings owing to their relationship with animals. “So many animal phrases and expressions that a book listing them all would become a small dictionary”.