A brief analysis of the Associative Meaning of Chinese and English Idioms

Idioms, having a great expressive and creative power as part of humanbeing's language, are refined from people's life practice and the process of their cognition of the world. They are a crystallization of human being's thinking and the cream of human being's language. Like a mirror, idioms can clearly reflect the cultural features of a nation. This paper, starting with the language phenomena from Chinese and English idioms, especially with their associative meanings, applying the theory of comparative linguistics, makes an analysis and comparison to the similarities and differences between Chinese and English idioms for the purpose of further understanding Chinese and English idioms and improving the ability for us to apply them and promoting foreign language teaching and intercultural communication.