STRAIGHT Image Schema and Its Metaphorical Extensions: A Contrastive Study between Chinese and English

This paper investigates STRAIGHT image schema and its metaphorical extensions in Chinese and English in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. Our central goal is to highlight the important role of embodied and cultural elements on the meaning formation. By observing the corpus data, we find three common variations both in Chinese and English, namely, STRAIGHT-PATH, STRAIGHT-LINK, STRAIGHT-OBJECT, and one characterized variation in Chinese, STRAIGHT-SCALE. The ratio of metaphorical usage of zhi in Chinese is higher than that of straight in English while straight enjoys a wider metaphorical extension than zhi . The findings suggest that although bodily experience serves as the general cognitive basis for the formation of image schema and its metaphorical extensions, cultural elements contribute to the language-specific preference.


Introduction
Image schema is an important conceptual principle and an analytical tool to meaning construction in cognitive linguistics. As it is stored in the mind and highly abstract in structure, it can be the major structuring element of certain cognitive models by virtue of the fact that each represents a simplified abstraction of some pattern in our bodily experience which we use as a model for conceptualizing more abstract concept of our lives (Johnson, 1987;Evans & Green, 2006). STRAIGHT schema is one of the most important image schemata in human cognition. The purpose of this article is to analyze STRAIGHT image schema and its metaphorical extensions in English and Chinese in order to uncover how it functions as a mental structure to construe abstract concepts, to find out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese speech communities when they use this schema as a mental structuring, and to explore the culture factors in metaphor choice. To do so, linguistic data used for analysis will be extracted in meta-corpus and the method of cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics will be combined in the analysis of the texts in the concordance.

Cienki's Research on STRAIGHT Schema
In his article, Cienki (1998) provided evidence for his claim by reviewing research on the special role of straight lines in visual perception, by considering the relationship between spatial and force-dynamic properties of straight bodily form and movements, and of straight objects which we commonly encounter in our environment. He then discussed the use of STRAIGHT in metaphors. He examined the metaphorical expressions that draw on STRAIGHT as the source domain in English and Russian and characterized them in terms of a variety of target domains, namely, discourse, thought, order, morality, and expected social behavior. In addition to an examination of English and Russian, he also provided the use of STRAIGHT as a source domain in metaphors in non-Indo-European languages, such as Hungarian and Japanese. He claimed that there is a duality in the STRAIGHT related system-a given domain is commonly characterized by two types of metaphor: an OBJECT version and a LOCATION version. There is no exception to the system. For example, when referring to legality and morality, one's actions can be described as straight or bent objects-straight dealings-or as motion along a path, as in "to follow the straight and narrow". "The OBJECT and LOCATION metaphors of event structure are high-level mappings in that they are very general and are elaborated in many different ways in terms of different kinds of events" (Cienki, 1998, p. 139). This proves Lakoff's (1993, p. xx) view that "the high-level metaphors for event structure are the ones more likely to be shared cross-culturally, while the lower-level metaphors are more likely to vary STRAIGHT Image Schema and Its Metaphorical Extensions: A Contrastive Study between Chinese and English across cultures". He also mentioned that the straight is a symbol of masculine in many Indo-European cultures, while the round, one form of the non-straight, stands for feminine. The straight associates with strength, hardness and stability, and the nonstraight is related to softness. The culturally-based stereotypes of men are rational and emotionally stable while women are intuitive and emotionally unstable. Therefore, the use of STRAIGHT reflects some cultural bias.
Although Cienki elaborated STRAIGHT schema from its embodied groundings to its metaphorical extensions, there are still some limitations in his study. First, most of the examples in his study are commonly occurring idiomatic expressions and few are naturally occurring data. The relative frequency with which these expressions actually occur in discourse should be considered in order to learn about the relative cognitive salience of the proposed metaphors in different contexts. Second, the variations of STRAIGHT schema are not described in his study, and it is still open to be completed.
It should diagram and classify its variants so as to explore the working mechanism of STRAIGHT schema. Lastly, as Cienki's research mainly focused on English and Russian, in order to investigate the universal linguistic property and distinct linguistic features in different languages of STRAIGHT schema we need to extend his theory to Chinese and thus demonstrate the embodied view in cognitive linguistics.

Data and Methodology
To distinguish the image schema STRAIGHT and the words straight and zhi (直 in Chinese), the former shall be capitalized and the latter shall be italicized in lowercase.
This study is based on the naturally-occurring linguistic data from the Chinese Corpus powered by Peking University for Chinese Linguistics (henceforth CCL) 1 and the Corpus of Contemporary American (henceforth COCA) 2 . Our search for instances of zhi and straight resulted in a concordance containing ca. 175000 and 40000 citations respectively. 10% of all the citations for straight or zhi works as a proper noun (which lack sufficient context for analysis), and 17557 instances of zhi and 4008 instances of straight formed the final corpus database as shown in Table 1. focused on contemporary English and Chinese, and thus pay special attention to metaphors. After consulting the dictionaries and the criteria for basic meanings of MIP, we found that the established meaning for straight is "not in a curve", for zhi "not curving". We then compared the contextual meaning of zhi and straight in the sentences for the basic meaning. If the contextual meaning of the given instances of straight and zhi contrasted with the basic meaning, it was marked as metaphorical.

The prototypical STRAIGHT schema
Unlike mental images, which are detailed and involve recalling visual memory, image schemas are schematic and therefore abstract in nature (Green & Evans, 2006, p. 185). Cienki (1998) proposed the prototypical STRAIGHT schema according to Leyton's principles by his exploration of symmetry and asymmetry in perception and cognition (1992). Leyton's principles state that the stable nature of a straight form is in perception and straight represents one kind of prototypical symmetric form. It serves as a standard of exactness and a means to judge other things. This makes sense given its prototypical status (Cienki, 1998, p. 11).
Given that a vertical straight form, or any other oblique straight forms, may involve resistance against the force of gravity, a horizontal straight line is a more natural and stable way of presentation for the schema. Therefore, the simplest form of STRAIGHT Image Schema and Its Metaphorical Extensions: A Contrastive Study between Chinese and English a prototypical STRAIGHT schema is a horizontal straight line (as shown in Figure 1).
All extended senses of straight are based on this primary schema.

STRAIGHT-PATH schema
The first common variant of the STRAIGHT schema is formed by blending with a PATH schema. The PATH schema (Johnson, 1987, pp. 113-117)

STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema
OBJECT schema is missing in Johnson's list, but it appears in Green and Evans' list of EXISTENCE image schemas. There are various objects in our real world, such as an apple, a table, a tree, a car or a house. In the interaction with the environment, we gradually perceive the concept of OBJECT which has a certain size and weight.
When the STRAIGHT schema superimposes on the OBJECT schema, the schema is a straight object. It is an object, and its body is straight, as shown in Figure 3. The following instances can be understood in terms of the STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema: "she is frank and outspoken" conservative straight media

STRAIGHT-LINK schema
The second type of variants of the STRAIGHT schema is formed by combining with the LINK schema. In Chinese, a usage of zhi expresses the sense of LINKAGE, such as genetic connection and administration network. In English straight also denotes the sense of LINKAGE, such as activities involving two participants. The LINK schema makes possible our perception of similarity. Those shared features of two or more objects are their cognitive links in our understanding (Johnson, 1987, pp. 118-119). Our lives are full of linkages. We have physical linkage with our biological mothers because they nourish and sustain us by umbilical cords. Holding hands is a concrete linkage for spatial contiguity and closeness; it is not merely physical and spatial linking between body parts and physical objects, but also non-physical and abstract linking to our society and between a series of events. Two events are linked together by temporal and casual connection. The simplest manifestation of the internal structure of the LINK schema consists of two entities (A and B) connected by a bonding structure (Johnson, 1987, p. 118). When the LINK schema is superimposed on the STRAIGHT schema, the bonding structure linking two entities becomes a straight line as shown in Figure 4.

Unique variant in Chinese: STRAIGHT-SCALE schema
SCALE schema is based on the "more" or "less" aspect of human experience. People use the SCALE schema to understand quantitative amount and qualitative degree.
Through the interaction, we experience our world as populated with discrete objects that we group in various ways and substances whose amount we can increase and decrease. We also experience objects and events as having certain degrees of intensity.
We see our world as a massive expanse of quantitative amount and qualitative degree or intensity (Johnson, 1987, p. 122). Both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of our experience give rise to the SCALE schema. Johnson (1987, pp. 122-123) suggested that SCALE schema has some features: (a) it has a fixed directionality;  The earliest pictographic version of zhi is . Zhi has a symbolic structure: Its primitive form is a vertical line standing on two eyes, which means looking straight upwards or ahead. It takes its shape from 目(mu, eye) and 丨(gun, linking up the upwards and the downwards). The modern form of zhi is a cross above an eye. The meaning of the form still reflects the action of looking at something without any obstruction.
In the corpus data, we found that zhi metaphorically extends into seven target domains, namely TIME, EVENT, RELATION, MORALITY, DISCOURSE, INTUITION and TRUTH. The percentage of the detected metaphorical extensions is presented in Table 2. (1) 直到此时 (zhi dao ci shi, straight arrive this time, until now) (2) 直至天明 (zhi zhi tian ming, straight till day light, until the break of dawn) In (1) and (1), zhi clearly shows a tendency to collocate with nouns which indicate a point of time. Gluckberg, Keysar and McGlone (cited in Zhou, 2001, p. 98) claimed that a common feature of the human mind is to systematically use the concept of space to express the concept of time. The conceptualization of time is common in cultures involving the metaphor TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 41-45). The concept of time is structured in terms of motion and space. The default assumption is that this motion is straight (Cienki, 1998, p. 122). The aspect of continuity within STRAIGHT is salient when two metaphorical aspects of TIME are highlighted: its motion is along a straight line, unbroken and continuous; it is directional that a series of entities are added up through time. As in (1) and (2) The zhi in the examples carries the sense of "without delay, at once". This use of zhi corresponds to the conceptualization of time as a moving object. In (7) to (9)

EVENT
The domain of EVENT can be roughly divided into five sub-domains: POLITICAL

ACTIVITIES, MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION, SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY,
ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES, and CONTINUITY. When zhi is used in this domain, the meaning is "happening or done without involving other people, actions in between".
The following special metaphorical extensions are detected among those instances: As the instances above reveal, there is no real path to follow. Instead, these events follow a metaphorical path. The motion towards a goal is not significantly altered by changes in direction or breaks in continuity, but by directly reaching the goal. With regard to political activities, the zhi in (10) to (12) indicates that the political events only relate to two agencies whose connection is directly linked. As for the zhi used in transportation, (13) to (16) are means of transportation that do not stop between the starting place and the destination. The zhi in (17) to (19)  The meaning of 直系亲属 (zhi xi qin shu) is blood relatives, which is the relationship between members of the same family. The meaning can be understood on the basis of STRAIGHT-LINK schema. Two members of the same family are seen as two points of a link, and the relationship is construed as a straight line that links the two points. Traditional Chinese society is family-oriented. Blood ties are the link between family and state, and the foundation of human relationships in a feudal society. The Confucian school built its ideological system upon this basic interpersonal relationship. In Confucian zhi is understood primitively in terms of blood tie relationships (Huang, 2007, p. 18 (24) and (25) involves only two agencies, the central/provincial government and an institution. They can be considered as two points at the ends of a link, and their link is an uninterrupted straight line. These cases are related to the metaphor DIRECT LINK IS A STRAIGHT LINE.

DISCOURSE
Zhi commonly occurs in specific terms within the field of discourse. The straight in (26) to (27)  In (30) to (32), zhi obviously carries the meaning of moral soundness. A morally virtuous person is expected to be honest, firm and straightforward. Behavior that is undivided in one society's moral principles is zhi. Though zhi is a philological concept of truth in ancient Chinese philosophy, ancient philosophers tended to discuss truth in terms of morality as truth is a crucial ingredient within morality (Song, 2009, p. 48). The word zhi and the word 德 (de, morality) derive from the same character. The oracle de could be pronounced as zhi. 以直报怨 (yi zhi bao yuan, use straight repay resentment, return good for evil) in The Analects of Confucius was later rewritten as 以德报怨 (yi de bao yuan, use morality repay resentment, return good for evil). In pre-Qin literature, zhi was frequently used to describe the true nature of humans (Song, 2009, p. 49). Confucius believed that the concept of Zhi is "an honest demeanor and personality" (Feng, 1982, p. 10). It is one's real disposition, a natural flow of true feelings (Huang, 2007, p.18). In his view, Zhi is the human's basic character and is crucial for the process of growth (Zhou, 2005, p. 40 and 直觉 (zhi jue) mean instinctive knowing without the use of a rational process.
One possible explanation of the metaphorical use is that eyes are the most important sensory organ to perceive the external world, and the pictographic perception is very direct. Zhi collocates with sense words to describe human intuition. Interestingly, the English word intuition derives from the Latin intueri which means "to look upon", while the original meaning of zhi is "to look at something without any block".
As these words evolved from cognitive concepts, users of these languages notice the important role of human visual perception. The word zhi emphasized a basic viewpoint of truth in ancient China: truth is the product of perception. Truth is not an abstract concept, but the fact that people can see with their own eyes. Truth is perceived and human perception is an ability to find truth (Song, 2009, p. 48 In Chinese, truth is commonly perceived as objects as in idioms (35) and (36).
The literal meaning of (35) is that when truth is straight one's breath is strong. The implied meaning is that one feels courageous if he has sufficient reasons to support his standing point. The idiom (36)  These examples are related to the metaphor TRUTH IS STRAIGHT.

Metaphorical extensions of straight
Straight originated as a purely spatial concept. It derives from the adjective use of the past participle of the Old English streccan "to stretch", which contains the meaning "direct, undeviating, not crooked".
In the corpus data, we found that straight metaphorically extends into twelve target domains, namely EVENT, TIME, TRUTH, SOCIAL NORM, DISCOURSE, CONTROL, MORALITY, HOMOGENEITY, ARTS, and CHOICE. The percentage of the metaphorical extensions detected is presented in Table 3.

EVENT
The most frequently used metaphorical extensions of straight is EVENTS.
(37) Santos is going straight to jail.
(38) No law bans these officials from moving straight from government into industry.
As there might be a real path to go from one place to the destination directly, in (37), a criminal can go directly to prison. However, even though the path someone follows may involve some real turns, we may describe it as straight if there were no stops or detours involved. This is the use of the metonymy of STRAIGHT MOTION STANDS FOR MOTION WITH NO SIGNIFICANT DETOURS (Cienki, 1998, p. 123). As shown in (38) there is a metaphorical, as opposed to concrete, path for the events to follow. The motion towards a goal is not significantly altered by changes in direction or breaks in continuity, but rather by reaching the goal directly. These metaphorical uses are based on the STRAIGHT-PATH schema. These cases are derived from the metaphor UNCOMPLICATED ACTION IS MOTION ALONG A STRAIGHT PATH.

TIME
The domain of TIME can be roughly divided into two domains: CONTINUITY and IMMEDIATENESS.
· IMMEDIATENESS (39) And I just knew straight away that I wasn't getting any responses whatsoever.
The straight in the examples carries the sense of immediateness. This use of straight corresponds to one conceptualization of time common in western cultures involving the conceptual metaphor TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 41-45). The default assumption is that this motion is STRAIGHT (Cienki, 1998, p. 122). In (39)

TRUTH
Truth is often connected with logical thought. As Sweetser points out (cited in Cienki, 1998, p. 121), thought processes are often conceived of metaphorically as motion through a mental landscape and there is a culturally shared metaphor THOUGHT IS MOTION ALONG A PATH. Consistent with this model, logical thought is understood metaphorically as motion along a straight path.
(41) We don't have this idea straight.
(42) I think we should get the facts straight.
(43) I hate it with a passion so overwhelming I can't think straight once it arrives.
In examples (41) to (43), have an idea straight, get a fact straight or think straight means to think in a logical manner or to understand something correctly.
This metaphorical use is based on the STRAIGHT-PATH schema, and the straight in these examples derive from the metaphor THOUGHT IS MOTION ALONG A PATH.
While truth is conceptualized as a straight object, putting an object in a logical, linear, straight order also maps into the domain of thought, as in example (44): (44) Let me just make it straight in my own mind. In (46) and (47), being straight refers to the opposite of being gay. If someone is described as straight, it means they are heterosexual rather than homosexual. Given the fact that sexual orientation is an emotional and physical preference which has little to do with the shape of straight, the straight in these cases is highly metaphorical.

SOCIAL NORM
In most cultures the primitive and conventional sexual relationship is between men and women. Being straight in sexual orientation is being sexually conventional.
Straight refers to something that obeys the norm. This metaphorical use is based on the STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema. This specific meaning of straight is related to the metaphor SOCIAL NORM IS STRAIGHT.

DISCOURSE
The following special metaphorical extensions are detected in the COCA: (48) I'm going to tell you straight out.
(49) Compassion and concern give way to straight, honest talk.
(50) no vagaries and no shadings to interfere with definitive, straight, orderly answers to questions Interestingly, the nature of discourse is understood in terms of shape here. A talk can be straight and the people involved in a talk prefer a straight talk and prefer to hear a straight answer. As Sweetser discussed, the default mode of discourse is not joking, politeness or frame-bargaining. Grice's maxim of informationality-making your contribution as informative as is required-is seen as a general cultural model.  (49) highlight speech as an object. The talk, answers are construed as objects in (50). This metaphorical use is based on the STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema. These cases relate to the metaphor MAXIMALLY INFORMATIVE SPEECH IS A STRAIGHT OBJECT.

CONTROL
Some of the STRAIGHT metaphors in English relate to order and control of one's position, motion, and other aspects of behavior.
(51) conservative straight media (52) Senior Indian strategic thinkers come to Washington, and with a straight face.
In the instances above, straight carries the meaning of "serious". Given that normal action, speech, and thought are characterized metaphorically as a straight object, a coherent metaphor is that SERIOUSNESS IS STRAIGHT. This metaphorical use is based on the STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema. Conservative straight media refers to media which tends to be geared to the American political right in content. One possible explanation for straight face is that compressing one's lip in a straight line can be expression of maintaining one's self-control. The expression straight face probably developed from the metonymy of straight lip to a straight face (Cienki, 1998, p. 125).

MORALITY
In the COCA, some of the metaphorical expressions of straight are concerned with morality: (53) I look back at what it means to be morally straight.
(54) This is a cybercritter that can't stick to the straight and narrow.
In all the instances, straight has the contextual meaning of "morally virtuous". In example (53), the meaning of straight in the context could be established as "morally honorable". To follow the straight and narrow as in (54)  STRAIGHT as a source domain for metaphors of honest is obvious in COCA.
The meaning of straight as "honest, respectable and reliable" is clear in instances (55) and (56). Being honest with one's spouse is an expected social behavior as well as a reliable statutory guardian to a child.

HOMOGENEITY
A substance that is homogeneous in material and texture is described as straight: (57) Biralbo was drinking iceless straight bourbon at the Lady Bird bar.
(58) E-mail: openforumdenverpost.com (only straight text, not attachments) Bourbon in example (57)  Some metaphors based on STRAIGHT refer to being consistent, as in the following example: (59) She was a straight A student, class valedictorian.
In all these cases, straight has the contextual meaning of "consistency". Straight A in (59) literally means a student achieves A grade in all the courses they have taken. A student achieving straight A refers to doing continuous work to achieve this superior scholastic accomplishment. All of these correspond to the definition of straight in OED as "continuous and unbroken". This kind of metaphorical use is based on the STRAIGHT-OBJECT schema. These cases are based on the metaphor AN UNINTERRUPTED SEQUENCE IS STRAIGHT.
STRAIGHT Image Schema and Its Metaphorical Extensions: A Contrastive Study between Chinese and English

LAW
As the expected standards of behavior in a society are solidified, laws (and legal behavior) are also metaphorically construed as STRAIGHT.
(61) Kunstler claimed these supposedly corrupt cops had used Davis, and when he decided to go straight they tried to kill him.
STRAIGHT extends metaphorically to the field of law. In (60) being just, fair and impartial is a social norm in settling lawsuits. The commissioner failed to keep the standard behavior in the event, so his action is described as not straight. The illegal act in (61)

ARTS
Straight occurs metaphorically in specific terms in the field of dance: In (62), the Straight Dance is a term for a traditional war dance of Native American pow wow. To understand this example, we have to take a look at the act of the Straight Dance. The description provided by Wikipedia is this: "The dance resembles a hunting or warring party and therefore the dancer must not dance backwards as that would symbolize a retreat from the enemy. Instead they always dance clockwise around the circle." The straight in the Straight Dance is not identified as its literal meaning, moving in a straight line. Instead of dancing along a straight line or forming a straight shape, dancers tend to constitute a circle and dance clockwise. Compared with another basic war dance, Fancy Dance, which is "flashy, colorful and highly energetic", the Straight Dance is regarded as being more simple, dignified and formal. In these examples, position and movements of dances are understood in relation to the metaphors MOVING FORWARD IS STRAIGHT and SIMPLICITY IS STRAIGHT.
(63) opera, ballet, straight plays, musicals. (63) is used in contrast to a "musical" and specifically refers to a non-musical play. One possible explanation for the use of straight is that straight refers to simplicity, for a non-musical play requires relatively less visual assistance than a musical play. The metaphor relates to SIMPLICITY IS STRAIGHT.

CHOICE
(64) Dole wants a straight fight with Pat Buchanan.
(65) Stable club delivers extremely straight ball flight and great forgiveness.

Comparison of the metaphorical extensions of zhi and straight
One of the aims of this study is to compare the metaphorical uses of zhi and straight.
In this corpus-based comparison of metaphors of STRAIGHT in English and Chinese, both similarities and differences were found. Zhi and straight all have a spatial meaning, the shape of a straight line. The question is whether the similarity is also reflected in the metaphorical uses of zhi and straight.
If we compare the findings listed in Table 2 and Table 3, some general observations can be made: (1) The percentage of zhi with metaphorical extensions was 93.45%, which is much higher than the 58.42% of straight. This demonstrates from a statistical perspective that zhi was used metaphorically more often than straight.
(2) According to these tables, the five target domains, namely TRUTH, MORALITY, DISCOURSE, EVENTS, and TIME, are found in both Chinese and English. An overview of the comparison of zhi's and straight's target domains is presented in Table 4. Although Chinese and English are different languages associated with distinct cultures, zhi and straight (two correspondent words referring to the concept of STRAIGHT) mapped onto five common target domains produce remarkably similar metaphorical extensions. Here arises another question: are there in fact differences between zhi and straight in some domains? By comparing the statistics in Table 2 and Table 3, we observed that: ( Both Chinese and English tend to conceptualize time as motion along a straight path. The universality of these STRAIGHT metaphors can be found at the generic level. Cienki (1998, p. 139) observed that many metaphors of straight are coherent with one general metaphor: UNALTERED IS STRAIGHT. This metaphor characterizes the metaphorical straight path or straight form in accordance with American cultural models of speech, thought, time and behavior as the default value and the status quo (Cienki, 1998, p. 140). As the results of the study showed, the STRAIGHT-PATH schema was the most pervasive one applied to understand abstract concepts. Our bodies are normally in straight position when we walk. In our experience of bodily motion, straightness characterizes uncomplicated or default motion, as a straight line is the shortest path between two points (Denayer, 2011, p. 69). This is the basis for the STRAIGHT-PATH metaphors. These metaphorical uses can be found both in Chinese and English.
As for the different domains straight and zhi mapped onto, we observed from  (1993, p. 4) states, there is a cultural model of moral law that is a part of American culture which is grounded in Judeo-Christian tradition according to which moral reasoning involves applying moral laws or rules. Thus, many people make decisions about moral issues by trying to conform to moral laws which they perceive as absolute. In a natural environment, exact straight forms are less common than nonstraight forms, while straight forms are much more common in the man-made environment. By doing so, we exert control over nature and reach a state of order.
More abstractly, man-made institutions like law system are ways to impose order (Denayer, 2011, p. 71 In the feudal society, the basic social unit is the family, thus most interpersonal relationships bond with blood ties. The society is family-oriented and the Confucian school began its ideological system from this basic blood tie relationship. The meaning of close relationship can be found in various expressions containing zhi. Two members in a family or two institutions are seen as two points, and the blood tie or Yingjie Li administrative relationship is considered metaphorically as a straight line linking the two points.
Borrowing from other cultures and innovative use are other ways to expand metaphor extensions. Straight Dance is a style of native American pow wow dancing.
"Never dance backward" is the key rule of the dancing and people used to call the rule straight. This metaphorical use of straight in American English came from the native American use of language, which did not directly link to the bodily experience or culture of English language users. By means of borrowing, the source domain STRAIGHT mapped onto the target domain ART. Deignan (2005, p. 40) set the rule for finding innovative metaphor: any sense of a word that is found less than once in every thousand citations of the word can be considered either innovative or rare. We found three instances in the corpus referring to activities that involve only two participants and classified them into the target domain of CHOICE. As for this metaphorical use of straight, the user highlighted the components of a straight form, two points at the end of a straight form. Two participants were seen as the very two points to understand the metaphors related to alternative choice.

Conclusion
This paper explored STRAIGHT image schema and its variants between Chinese and English within a cognitive linguistic framework. Similar bodily experiences are the most fundamental motivation for the prototypical STRAIGHT schema. The detailed comparative analysis of the corpus data of zhi and straight showed that they occur metaphorically in many different domains. The meaning of zhi and straight in a certain phrase was often strongly connected to the specific collocation it participated in. The conventional meaning associated with a particular word is a prompt for the process of meaning construction. In this way the metaphorical projections are not arbitrary and they influence human reasoning.

Further Research
The complete analysis of zhi and straight has provided us with some insights as regards STRAIGHT in Chinese and English, but these are insufficient to account for a representative reconstruction of the culture model for STRAIGHT. As a consequence, in further research a more detailed analysis of lexicon for STRAIGHT should be considered. Among the lexemes that could be engaged in the further study, a few central ones should be highlighted: Chinese 端 (duan, upright), 行 (hang, line), 横 (heng, horizontal), 竖 (shu, vertical), 正 (zheng, upright) or 立 (li, erect); English erect, plain, even, horizontal, level, upright, or vertical to name a few. By contrast, this study opens the door for the analysis of the opposite form and experience of STRAIGHT. In the study of straightness, it can be contrasted with the descriptions of curve, crookedness and unevenness. Some of the lexis that could be engaged in the further study, like Chinese 曲 (qu, curve), 弯 (wan, crooked), 歪 (wai, askew), English bent, curve, twist or zigzag.