Jurnal Bahasa dan Budaya China

Metaphor is a figure of speech in language. Lakoff and Johnson believe that we can use metaphors to understand the world because metaphors are conceptual systems in human daily life. Taste is one of the basic senses. Only with sense can we feel delicious food. After taste passes through metaphor, it will create words for other abstract concepts. This article aims to understand the metaphorical meanings of basic Chinese and Indonesian taste words, the similarities and differences in the field of metaphor mapping, and the main factors. This article takes the four basic taste words (sweet, bitter, sour, spicy) in Chinese and Indonesian as the research object. Through research, we found that there are some similarities and differences in the metaphorical meanings and metaphorical mapping fields of basic Chinese and Indonesian taste words. For example, the mapping fields of the same taste metaphor words have different metaphorical meanings; the mapping fields of the same taste metaphor words have the same metaphorical meaning; similarly Taste words have different metaphorical meanings; same taste words have the same metaphorical meaning. This study also found that the main factors affecting the similarities and differences of Indonesian taste metaphors are human physiological basis, cognition and thinking styles, and dietary cultural habits.