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Chapter One   Introduction 

1.1 Rationale of the Research 
As  a  special  social  and  cultural  phenomenon,  language  is  the  product  of  the development  of  cognition  and  thinking  that  are  fixed  into  words  and  sentences  in people’s  long-term  use  and  then  become  a  tool  to  keep  communication  and  promote social  development.  Chinese  is  one  of  the  oldest  and  richest  languages  in  the  world, which has numerous vocabulary and various phrases. Chinese idioms, with rich ethnic connotations, are the collective wisdom of Chinese people and the essence of Chinese culture.  They  were  based  on  humans’  embodiment  in  daily  life  and  created  in  the process  of  people’s  practice,  containing  a  large  amount  of  cultural  connotations. Chinese idioms are concise, refined and vivid, and therefore attract great attention of domestic scholars. In fact, over the last twenty years there has been continuing interest in the research of Chinese idioms.   It should be noted that animal-related idioms are more interesting. Human beings have  lived  close  to  animals  since  the  beginning  of  their  existence.  In  the  long-term interaction  and  communication  between  human  and  animals,  people  have  been observing  and  describing  animals’  appearances, behaviors  or  living  habits  and  so  on, and much cultural information has been projected to animals, therefore a large number of  animal  idioms  have  been  created.  There  have  been  many  studies  about  animal idioms,  but  most  of  them  were  based  on  the  perspective  of  culture,  translation  and comparative  studies  between  Chinese  and  foreign  languages,  few  were  conducted from  the  cognitive  angle.  This  thesis,  based  on  theories  related  to  Cognitive Linguistics, will conduct a study of Chinese zodiac idioms with four characters, in an attempt to reveal the cognitive rationale of such idioms and explore the ways Chinese people engage the animal world.   
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1.2 Objectives of the Research  
The appearance of the second-generation cognitive science has contributed to the establishment  and  development  of  Cognitive  Linguistics  which  provides  a  new theoretical  perspective  for  the  study  of  language.  Cognitive  Linguistics,  on  the  basis of  embodied  philosophy,  has  a  strong  explanatory  power  for  language  and  makes great  contribution  to  a  unified  and  comprehensive  analysis  本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。