This thesis employs both top-down and bottom-up approaches to determine the source domain of a conceptual metaphor. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to identify source domains in metaphor studies; however, the precision of the two approaches has not previously been compared. By comparing the top-down and bottom-up approaches to source domain determination, this thesis attempts to fill the gap left by previous research by using computational tools, such as WordNet, SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology) and Sketch Engine. This thesis was also awarded the 2007 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award by the Association of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing (ACLCLP).