Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: The idioms of different languages have their own cultural imprints. It is usually related to the object or environment that is familiar to local people through long-term development. People adopt different species of animal as metaphors in an expressive way to express their feelings or to describe social phenomena. Both Chinese and English are rich in their animal idioms. However, different nations do not treat all the animal idioms in the same way due to their different geographical environments, customs and habits, religions. Therefore, there are cultural discrepancies between Chinese and English animal idioms. The thesis makes a comparative analysis, focusing on four aspects of the similarities and differences of animal idioms and cultural connotations in both Chinese and English: the same animal idioms having the same cultural connotations; different animal idioms with similar cultural connotations; the same animal idioms with different cultural connotations in the two cultures; the same animal idioms without corresponding words in the other language.

Key words: animal idioms; cultural discrepancies; comparative analysis; cultural connotations

摘要：习语有着丰富的民族色彩，一国的习语，往往取材于这国生活环境中熟悉的事物。人们借动物喻人，寓情于动物，来表达不同的人类情感和社会现象，从而形成了语言中一朵大放异彩的奇葩——动物习语。汉英两种语言皆有丰富的动物习语。然而，由于地理环境、风俗习惯、宗教等因素的不同，各国对动物词汇的理解并不一样。因而汉英动物习语各自所蕴涵的文化意义就存在差异。本文使用比较分析的方法，着重探究汉英动物习语及其文化内涵的四个方面的异同：动物形象相同，文化内涵相似；动物形象不同，文化内涵相似；动物形象相同，文化内涵相异；动物形象相同，文化内涵“零对应”。

关键词：动物习语；文化差异；比较分析；文化内涵

1. Introduction
Animals share the same globe with human beings. Some animals have a close relationship with our daily life, such as pets, poultry and livestock. During the long course of history, people are unavoidably forming some good or bad feelings and attitudes towards these animals through keen observation of their behavior. These subjective attitudes are naturally reflected in a nation's language and vocabulary, especially in the idioms related to animals. For example, most English learners are familiar with the English idiom, "It's raining cats and dogs" (倾盆大雨). Here "cats and dogs" have lost their original meaning. It comes from a fairy tale of Northern Europe. "Love me, love my dog." Here, Chinese people and English people use different referents to express the same idea. Actually, Chinese and English are rich in such interesting animal idioms. Anyone who would like to collect and study these idioms generally and meticulously will get much fun and knowledge from them. A deep study into them will not only help Chinese students learn English language and culture well, but also do much good to the intercultural communication. Therefore, this paper attempts to discuss cultural similarities and differences between China and English-speaking countries through comparing some idioms which centre on certain animals.