山西大同大学《英语测试》课程论文题目：与羊相关好的习语专业：英语学生姓名：张晓君年级：09班级序号：5班学号：090502011538 完成时间：2012 年 6 月成绩：教师签名：Idioms Related to Sheep in English and ChineseAbstract: Language and culture are interwoven with each other, as an important part in idioms, animal idioms reflect the cultural characters distinctively in both Chinese and English, and have rich expressiveness. This paper focuses on sheep related idioms, and discuss sheep’s image, economic, religion, and history reflecting in idioms. The purpose is to better understand cultural elements and meanings of idioms and improve intercultural communicative competence.Key words: Animal Idioms; Sheep; Cultural Characters与“羊”相关的中英文习语摘要：语言和文化是密不可分的，作为习语中的一个重要组成部分，动物习语鲜明地体现了汉语与英语语言的文化特色，并具有丰富的表现力。

本文从与羊有关的习语入手，探讨羊的形象、经济、宗教和历史在习语中的映射，更好地了解其文化因素及意义，提高跨文化交际能力。

关键词：动物习语；羊；文化特色Idioms Related to Sheep in English and Chinese1. IntroductionWhat does idiom mean? It means a group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words (qtd. in Ai Suping 183). There are many animal related idioms in both English and Chinese, and sheep is a typical kind of animal. For the relationship between human life and sheep is so close that the idioms about it have become an integral part of human culture. “Without idioms our language would become dull and dry, whereas an appropriate use of them in our speech and writing will add to the strength and vividness of our language” (Yu Fumin and Guo Shanglian 1). They have the properties of profound moral, brevity, expressiveness and rich cultural connotation. Vivid image of sheep, prominent features, are often used to describe the quality and personality of something and somebody, so it’s more vivid. This paper will focus on sheep related idioms by introducing reflection of sheep’s image, economic, religion, and history in them. To learn and study animal idioms by studying the associative meaning of sheep, sheep’s image both in English and Chinese idioms as well as the origin of idioms will help to achieve a thorough understanding, a proper command and a solid grasp of sheep culture in idiom.2. Cultural reflection in sheep related idioms2.1 Image of sheepSheep always give us the image of gentle, pure, delicate and innocent. People often use “like a lamb” to describe someone who is innocent or bright. The fable “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”refers to the person who appears good but actually is vicious and cruel; sometimes it also means that it is more dangerous to disguise. In the saying “lamb fall into a tiger’s mouth”, lamb stands for the weak, which is caught by tiger. Also there are a number of proverbs related to sheep, such as:He that makes himself a sheep shall be eaten by the wolf: the person who is weakwould be mistreated by others.The sheep who talks peace with a wolf will soon be mutton: be sure not to begfor peace to your enemy.Cast sheep’s eyes at s omebody: send over a charming glanceto somebody.As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb: whether steal for big or tiny things, it always be a thief. It means “In for a peeny,in for a pound”.However, to some degree, sheep has its derogatory sense. Black sheep is a kind of sheep which have a fiery temperament, so people use “black sheep” as a metaphor for crasher, aprodigal person or someone who stir for trouble. In chinese, people use hai qun zhi ma (blach horse) to express the same meaning with “black sheep”, which can be seen in zhuangzi.In the times when shepherding a flock of sheep was an important means ofliving, some people believed that the black sheep was a devil incarnationwho would cause misfortune to the flock; others thought that black sheepfailed to meet their masters’ expectations in the exchange of goods simplybecause of their colour. Thus a black sheep came to be employed to refer to aperson regarded as not so respectable or successful as the rest of his familyor group. (He Runfang 44)Other idioms related to sheep have passive meaning too. For example, “shy sheep”means coward; “get one’s goat”means get someone angry;“follow like sheep”is the same as follow blindly; “old goat” refers to pervert or jerk old geezer; and “ride the goat”refers to acceding to the clandestine organization.2.2 EconomicWe all know that industry of raising livestock is developed in England. When shearing wool, they have to gather wool in order not to be wasting because a lot of wool would acatter in fense, but gathering wool is trivial and boring. So people always use “wool-gathering”as a metaphor for boring work. In addition, Wool is important for sheepherder, so it would make them anger if wool was lost. Now “loose one’s wool”always means anger or lost one’s temper. What’s more, “much wool on the back”describe lots of money.2.3 ReligionChiristianity is the most widespread religion in the west. English, as the international language, is greatly influenced by this religion since it was brought to Britain by the Romans (Li Yuping 115). Sheep plays an important role in Christianity solots of stories, characters, sentences and phrases in Bible, which is the principle of Christianity, have become commom idioms in western countries. Christianity regard sheep as humanity, which gets lost easily and should depend on the strength of faith in Christianity to return to the right way, so Jesus names himself as “sheepherder”. The saying “lost lamb” stands for the person who lured by crime easily and being degenerate. According to Matthew in New Testament: “All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep fromthe goat.” From this, “sheep” is used as a metaphor for “good person” and “goat” is used as a metaphor for “bad person”, “to separate /tell the sheep fromthe goat” means distinguish good from bad.“Scapegoat”, means to be blamed for something that someone else did, which originates from ancient Judaism. According to the rule made by Mose, two goats should be sacrificed in the Day Of Atonement (july, 7th), the one is called the Lord's goat, which would be the sacrificial offerings, the other one is called escape goat or scapegoat, which would assume all crimes made by all the people. With both hands pressing in the sheepshead of the escape goat, the pontifex professes that all crimes made by Jewry in last year have trasferred to that goat, then it would be banished to wilderness with Jewry’s crimes carrying away. It should be pointed that in ancient Hebrew Bible, the escape goat is named Azazel, which translated to be “goat that departs” in English, and later commonly called escapegoat. Several examples are as follows:They were made the scapegoats for the misfire of the program.He felt that his boss would throw him to the lions if anything went wrong.The old curmudgeon found a new scapegoat and that let me out.2.4 HistoryIn Chinese history, we regarded “hong yang”(red sheep) as great calamity. The ancient people thouhgt that bingwu, and dingwei are years when China would have calamities, further more, bing, and ding act as fire, whose color is red, and wei subordinate to sheep, so they regarded hong yang jie (“red sheep calamity”) as calamity. It can be seen in many ancient books, for example, Chai Wang’s Bing Ding Gui Jian (《丙丁龟鉴》) in Song Dynasty, it recorded that 21 social upheaval happened in years of bingwu and dingwei from the Warring States to the Five Dynasties.Sheep has left deep prints in Chinese culture. In ancient China, yang(sheep) and xiang(lucky) are interchangeable words, we always use san yang kai tai to express auspicious wishes, which commonly seen in the beginning of the year. Because “羊”(yang) and “阳” (yang) have the same pronunciation in Chinese, “三羊开泰”has the same meaning with“三阳开泰”. Some other Chinese idioms about sheep are listed as follows:Wang yang de niu: lose a sheep and get an ox, the gain is greater than the loss, it actually means a blessing in disguise.Wang yang bu lao: mending the fold after a sheep is lost, it means that it's never too late to mend when in trouble in daily life.Qi lu wang yang: lose one’s bearings when the situation is too complicated or changeableRu lang mu yang: like a wolf shepherding the sheep, as a metephor for oppression of the people by bad officials.Shi yang jiu mu: nine shepherds look after ten sheep, it means more officials than the layman.Duo qi wang yang: it is hard for a person to obtain progress and success without persistence in learning and working.Shun shou qian yang: coming from Heroes of the Marshes, later, it is used as a metaphor for people snithing something from the host at his convenience.3. ConclusionLanguage is a mirror of society; all kinds of social phenomena can be revealed in language. That is to say, society has a profound influence on language. On the contrary, language can also affect a society by influencing or even controlling the world view of its speakers (Trudgill 13). As an important part in language, Sheep related idioms, as well as animal idioms, are commonly existing in both English and Chinese. they are not only concise and comprehensive, but also vivid and witty, and closely show a nation’s history, culture, custom, and so on. Analyzing and comparing some English-Chinese animal idioms cultural connotation, we can see clearly that sheep related idioms in any kind of language are not only represent animal symbol, but also have rich cultural connotation.ReferencesTrudgill, P. Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. London: Penguin Group, 2000.艾素萍，“英美文化在英语习语中的映射”，《科教文汇》2007年第9期，第183页。