MONEY metaphor in English idioms and proverbs

Abstract

The paper studies the concept of MONEY in English idioms and proverbs from the angle of cognitive linguistics by summarizing theories and arguments on conceptual metaphor, collecting, investigating and analyzing data, putting them in categories of structural metaphors and ontological metaphors, of which the structural metaphors are divided into sub-categories: MONEY as the source domain and MONEY as the target domain; from there the paper suggests generalizations on the features of the English language and culture which are reflected in the use of money-related metaphors in idioms and proverbs.