A Comparison between Conceptual Metaphors in Chinese and English Sayings of Life

The Event Structure Metaphor is one of the most important conceptual metaphors proposed by Lakoff.This paper analyses conceptual metaphors of life from the aspect of the Event Structure Metaphor and subdivides them into three groups, i.e.the location-version, the object-version and the dual-version.Linguistic materials are collected from the Four Tragedies by Shakespeare in English and Dream of the Red Chamber in Chinese.This paper focuses on the conventional metaphors of life, leaving the creative ones to be investigated later.