Abstract
The studies about animal and plant metaphors are a few. Most of them are the work on the compilation of dictionaries about animal names used in metaphors or the comparison of most common figurative meanings between languages. Such discrepancy, however, may exist within a single language. Our study aims to exam the underlying rules governing their formation by means of surveying the conventionalized anima/plant idioms and metaphors in Mandarin Chinese. The corpus is based on the questionnaire, the collection from the online Mandarin Chinese Dictionary of Ministry of Education, R.O.C., and other related work like proverb or insulting terms. We found that even within a single language, the differences or similarities (e.g. degree of conventionality, common values) among animal and plant metaphors could be arisen as a result of interaction among the salient traits of animals and plants defining their levels, human-animal/plant relationship (e.g. relevance, familiarity, functions, significance), personal backgrounds (e.g. age, gender) and the existence of idioms. These similarities and difference reflect our relationship, concept, attitude, and judgment to the society and Nature.