This article describes the ways and variations of image interpretation of the parole, the speech, the speaking person in the system of metaphorical nominations in Russian and Chinese. Some lexical units in which vocal sounding of a person has straight and metaphoric meaning were analysed. The analysed concept may be referred to verbalized, kaleidoscopic gestalt-concepts with universal and language-specific components of meaning. Interrelation of universal and language-specific components in the meaning structure is represented in a language in the form of conceptual metaphors. As far as it is the speaking activity, the parole, which is of great importance, this article shows the divergence of metaphorical interpretation of the conceptual cores (such as "parole, speaking", "speaking person"), of the concept "language" in the Russian language picture of the world and in the Chinese one. Metaphorical interpretation of the Russian parole and that of the Chinese one differ in some aspects and at the same time have something in common. At the highest level of generalization, the common aspect of semantic models of speech image interpretation, first of all, is in the fact that in the compared languages this semantic sphere can be both a source-sphere and a target-sphere of metaphorical expansion. The difference between the languages from this point of view is the degree of relation type productiveness. For example, the Chinese verbs of speech are used as the target-sphere not so often in comparison with the Russian language. Just a few cases of animal sound metaphorical conceptualisation through the source-sphere "speech, parole" are fixed in the dictionaries, though these sense relations can be found. They are supported by myth images. The compared languages both characterize not only the form, but also the content of parole with the use of images. However, in this case similar traits of the form (sounding) and the parole content can be interpreted on the base of similar and different features. One more difference of the languages is the absence of singular metaphorical models in the compared languages. Metaphorical interpretations of speech, parole in Russian and Chinese have one more common trait, i.e. interpretation of some certain parole type with the use of the same image.