TY - JOUR
T1 - Body and emotion
T2 - Body parts in Chinese expression of emotion
AU - Yu, Ning
N1 - Funding Information:
* This study was supported by a Junior Faculty Summer Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma. I would like to thank the editors and reviewers of this special issue for their valuable comments and suggestions on the earlier version of this paper. 1. In collecting Chinese data I used the following popular dictionaries: Lü and Ding (1980, 1989, 1996), Wang (1992), Wei (1995), and Wu (1993). In the lexical examples, the parentheses contain glosses and single quotes contain translations (where prt stands for “particle” in a broad sense). A character version of the Chinese examples is provided in the appendix, numbered as they are in the main text. It must be pointed out that the English emotion words I use in the glosses and translations, though based on the Chinese-English dictionaries, are used in a loose sense. This is because categorizations and lexicons of emotion as well as others can be different to varying degrees across languages and cultures, and that is the primary motivation behind the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) for cross-linguistic analysis (see, e.g., Wierzbicka 1992, 1999). So, when I use an English emotion word X in the glosses, translations, or main text, it should be interpreted as “X is in some sense equivalent or similar to the Chinese original”.
PY - 2002
Y1 - 2002
N2 - This study presents a semantic analysis of how emotions and emotional experiences are described in Chinese. It focuses on conventionalized expressions in Chinese, namely compounds and idioms, which contain body-part terms. The body-part terms are divided into two classes: those denoting external body parts and those denoting internal body parts or organs. It is found that, with a few exceptions, the expressions involving external body parts are originally metonymic, describing emotions in terms of their externally observable bodily events and processes. However, once conventionalized, these expressions are also used metaphorically regardless of emotional symptoms or gestures. The expressions involving internal organs evoke imaginary bodily images that are primarily metaphorical. It is found that the metaphors, though imaginary in nature, are not really all arbitrary. They seem to have a bodily or psychological basis, although they are inevitably influenced by cultural models.
AB - This study presents a semantic analysis of how emotions and emotional experiences are described in Chinese. It focuses on conventionalized expressions in Chinese, namely compounds and idioms, which contain body-part terms. The body-part terms are divided into two classes: those denoting external body parts and those denoting internal body parts or organs. It is found that, with a few exceptions, the expressions involving external body parts are originally metonymic, describing emotions in terms of their externally observable bodily events and processes. However, once conventionalized, these expressions are also used metaphorically regardless of emotional symptoms or gestures. The expressions involving internal organs evoke imaginary bodily images that are primarily metaphorical. It is found that the metaphors, though imaginary in nature, are not really all arbitrary. They seem to have a bodily or psychological basis, although they are inevitably influenced by cultural models.
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U2 - 10.1075/pc.10.12.14yu
DO - 10.1075/pc.10.12.14yu
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84989388386
SN - 0929-0907
VL - 10
SP - 341
EP - 367
JO - Pragmatics and Cognition
JF - Pragmatics and Cognition
IS - 1-2
ER -