Between Linearity and Cyclicity: A Study on the Cognitive Construction and Cultural Roots of Time Metaphors in Chinese and English
Abstract
Time is a Moving Object and Time is a Resource in English, and on Chinese expressions construing time as flowing water, cyclical return, and a spatialized path, it argues that English quantifies time as an instrumental resource shaped by industrial modernity, while Chinese foregrounds the natural and cyclical dimension rooted in Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist thought. The divergence is a structural difference in how speakers organize temporal experience, with consequences for foreign language teaching, translation, and cross-cultural
communication.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/wef.v4i2.9617
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