A Map to Locate COLD HEART of Chinese and English

Shan Zhang

Abstract


The “physical heart” of people around the world is very similar, and this would result in the universality of metaphorical thinking, but the conceptualization of a “mental heart” can differ cross-culturally. This study contributes to the issue of universality vs. intercultural variability of conceptualizations regarding abstract concepts within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Cold heart-related metaphors were analyzed via qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected from two authoritative corpora—Center for Chinese Linguistics (CCL) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Results reveal that the universal bodily experience accounts for the shared source domain for a cold heart metaphor. However, the shared metaphor heart is temperature displays variations in detail. To construe cold heart-related metaphors in Chinese, we should mainly take a “patient view” to investigate the response from others which indicates the passiveness and less pronounced ego-centrality, while an “agent view” is generally adopted to study “cold heart” in English that focuses on the apathy to others which means that a human’s own initiated mind or attitude is the locus. These findings suggest that cultural variance in individualism vs. collectivism motivates different conceptualizations of cold heart.


Keywords


COLD HEART metaphor, HEART IS TEMPERATURE, corpus-based method, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, contrastive study

Full Text:

PDF

References


Deignan, Alice. 1999. “Metaphorical polysemy and paradigmatic relations: A corpus study”. Word 50 (3): 319-338. doi: 10.1080/00437956.1999.11432491

Gao, Hang, and Yan, Chen-Song. 2008. “Conceptual Metaphors Derived from the Temperature Schema in Chinese 汉语温度图式所衍生的概念隐喻”. Journal of Sichuan International Studies University 24 (2): 7-12

Grady, Joseph. 1997. “Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes.” Escholarship.org. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3g9427m2.

Gutiérrez Pérez, Regina. 2008. “A cross-cultural analysis of heart metaphors”. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses (21): 25. Universidad de Alicante Servicio de Publicaciones. doi:10.14198/raei.2008.21.03.

Hofstede, Geert H. 1984. Culture’s consequences, international differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills: Sage.

Hofstede, Geert H. 2001. Culture’s consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.

Holyoak, Keith J. & Thagard, Paul. 1997. “The analogical mind”. American Psychologist 52 (1): 35-44. American Psychological Association (APA). doi:10.1037/0003-066x.52.1.35.

Høystad, Ole M. 2009. A history of the heart. London: Reaktion Books.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kövecses, Zoltán. 2020. Extended Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lin, Lu. 2019. “Conceptual Metaphors of “ Cold ” from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics : A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of English and Chinese”. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:199475234

Mesquita, Batja & Powerell, Ryan. 2009. Cultural specificity. In David Sander and Klaus R. Scherer (eds.) Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, 107. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Musolff, Andreas. 2010. Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust. Routledge.

Niemeier, Susanne. 2003. “Straight from the heart—métonymie and metaphorical explorations”. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: 195-214. DE GRUYTER. doi:10.1515/9783110894677.195.

Niemeier, Susanne. 2008. “To Be in Control: Kind-Hearted and Cool-Headed. The Head-Heart Dichotomy in English.” Essay. In Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages, edited by Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Niemeier, 349–372. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ogarkova, Anna, and Cristina Soriano. 2014. “Emotion and the body: A corpus-based investigation of metaphorical containers of anger across languages”. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics 5 (2): 147-179. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:96909

Pragglejaz Group. 2007. “MIP: A Method for Identifying Metaphorically Used Words in Discourse”. Metaphor and Symbol 22 (1): 1-39. doi: 10.1080/10926480709336752

Qi, Xiu-Gui, and Li, Ying-Jie. 2014. “The Image Schema of Temperature Domain in English and Its Metaphorical System 英语温度域的意象图式及其隐喻系统” Contemporary Foreign Language Studies 14 (6): 70-76

Qian, Li. 2016. “Metonymic-Based Metaphor—A Case Study on the Cognitive Interpretation of “Heart” in English and Chinese”. Higher Education Studies 6 (4): 131. Canadian Center of Science and Education. doi:10.5539/hes.v6n4p131.

Ren, Xiao-Yan. 2006. “A Study of Lexicons of the Temperature Sensations in Modern Chinese 现代汉语温度感觉词研究”. Master’s Thesis, Shandong University.

Searle, John R. 1995. The construction of social reality. New York, NY: Free Press.

Sheridan, Desmond. 2018. “The Heart, a constant and universal metaphor”. European Heart Journal 39 (37): 3407-3409. Oxford University Press (OUP). doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehy491.

Skara, Danica. 2004. “Body metaphors—reading the body in contemporary culture”. Collegium antropologicum. 28 Suppl 1. 183-189. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15156741/

Triandis, Harry C. 1989. “The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts”. Psychological Review 96 (3): 506-520. American Psychological Association (APA). doi:10.1037/0033-295x.96.3.506.

Wu, Fang. 2006. “A Cognitive Study of Temperature Words-‘han’, ‘leng’, ‘liang’ during ancient times-mediaeval times 上古-中古 ‘寒’、‘冷’、‘凉’ 词群的认知研究”. Master’s Thesis, Central China Normal University.

Yu, Ning. 2019. “Metaphor from Body and Culture.” Edited by Raymond W. Jr. Gibbs. The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, 247–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511816802.016.

Zhao, Lucy. 2012. “A Cultural Comparison of Spatial Metaphors in Chinese and English”. PhD thesis, University of Michigan.

Zhou, Shifang & Jiang, Xiangyong. 2020. “A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study of HEART Metaphor in Chinese and English”. International Journal of Language & Linguistics 7 (3). Center for Promoting Ideas. doi:10.30845/ijll.v7n3p9.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/nh.2023.8.3-21
Date of publication: 2023-12-23 00:15:51
Date of submission: 2022-10-29 23:31:16


Statistics


Total abstract view - 550
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 0

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2023 Shan Zhang

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.