THE CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR OF LOVE IS THE HEART IN CHINESE

Abstract

In Chinese, the heart (心, xīn) is a popular metaphor to symbolize love. This
metaphor comes from the traditional Chinese concept of the central role of the
heart in the human body, which is considered the place where the strongest
emotions, including love, are stored. This theory is once again reinforced through
the love metaphor "心 tim" in Chinese. The article studies the conceptual
metaphor LOVE IS HEART based on the theory of conceptual metaphor, through
a survey of 300 contemporary Chinese love poems to find linguistic expressions
expressing this conceptual metaphor. Based on embodied experience, the
characteristics of the source domain TIM are shown through the projection model
between the source domain and the target domain.