A Corpus-based Study of Metaphor in Pavilion of Women

3.1 Metaphor identification

The corpus tool Antconc3.2.4w, ^[3] which was developed by Professor Laurence Anthony of Waseda University in Japan, was adopted to classify and retrieve the metaphorical keywords. One of its important functions is to calculate the keywords in the observed corpus related to the reference corpus, and it includes the tools Concordance, Concordance Plot, File View, and Clusters, which can retrieve multiple languages, and has basic corpus analysis functions such as word retrieval.

In this study, we coded the novel for metaphor through the application of the MIPVU metaphor identification procedure (Steen et al. 2010b). This procedure, a more impeccable version of MIP (Pragglejaz Group 2007), needs a manual analysis for each word, which means that we judge whether every word in the novel is metaphorically used or not. The identification procedure assumes that metaphorically applied lexical items in the discourse interrupt semantic coherence by introducing an unfamiliar conceptual domain (Charteris-Black 2004: 21, 35). We first judged the contextual meaning of the word analyzed to determine whether such a disruption appears or not. The same discourse may imply different information under different contexts, depending on the outcome of a hearer's choice. This is obviously not the information directly encoded by the language form but is the result of the human’s cognition, which depends on the context (Zhao 2015: 86).

Take the analysis of “wall,” for example, in the sentence “the walls of the courts where she had spent her whole life receded” (Buck 1946: 164). The first step is to understand the contextual meaning of the word. The contextual meaning of “wall” is “the side of something hollow, especially within the body” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online – LDOCE-O). The second step is to determine whether or not the word has a more fundamental meaning outside of the context. The basic meaning is defined as more concrete, tangible, and body-related, or more precise and historic. Additionally, there is a more concrete, precise, and thus more fundamental meaning of “wall” in the example: “an upright flat structure made of stone or brick, that divides one area from another or surrounds an area” (LDOCE-O). The final step is to compare the contextual meaning with the basic meaning, but the comparison should be comprehensible. If the contextual meaning and the basic meaning are sufficiently distinct, the word is identified as a metaphor. In the example “the side of something hollow, especially within the body” there is a strikingly different meaning that is comprehensible in comparison. Thus, the word “walls” in “the walls of the courts where she had spent her whole life receded” is identified as a metaphorical expression.

We adopted the corpus-based dictionary Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online as a reference tool to examine the contextual meaning and basic meaning of a word in order to avoid depending on intuition. Similes involving direct metaphorical comparisons are also identified through the use of the MIPVU procedure. The following example taking from Pavilion of Women can explain such a case: “Her round red face which had been beaming like a lit lantern was suddenly woeful” (Buck 1946: 13). Although the words are used in their basic meaning, the metaphorical comparison is still working. The comparison of these two distinct domains (HUMAN FACE vs LIGHT SOURCE) is established by means of a simile (“had been like”).

Finally, personification is marked as metaphorical use, for example, “flowers” in “so far, I have never heard of his even entering a house of flowers” (15) is identified as a metaphor because the word “flowers” is a kind of plant, which refers to “prostitutes” in this example, therefore, a mapping between HUMAN and PLANT is constructed.

3.2 Interpretation of metaphor distributions in the novel

We put the English version of Pavilion of Women (Buck 1946) into AntConc 3.2.4w to set up a corpus, which includes 138,916 tokens and 7,168 types. The term “token” refers to the total number of words in a text and the term “type” refers to the total number of different word forms in a text (Yang 2002: 161). The simple number of tokens and types cannot reflect the essential features of a text, but the ratio between them can reflect the essential features of the text, namely, the variability of the word. In general, the higher the TTR (type/token ratio) is, the higher the variability of the word will appear. However, English vocabulary is limited. If the text continues to expand, the number of tokens will expand, but the increase in the number of types cannot be kept in synchronization. When a text capacity reaches a certain level, the increase in the number of types will become smaller and smaller, and the ratio of the two cannot reflect the variability of the word. Therefore, we need to gain the STTR (standardized type/token ratio) by calculating and averaging the TTR of every 1,000 words of the novel to reflect the variability of the word (Yang 2002: 162).

In order to gain the distribution of the three types of metaphor in the novel, the corpus was divided into 15 corpora according to the 15 chapters of the novel and the description of them is shown in Table 1.

It can be seen from Table 1 that the TTR of the novel is 5.1 and the mean of the TTR of 15 chapters is 18.7, while the STTR of the novel reaches 43.15 and the mean of the STTR of the 15 chapters is 41.2. Among the 15 corpora of the novel, Chapter 1 shows the highest number of tokens, while Chapter 15 shows the lowest. However, Table 3 shows that Chapter 7 has the greatest number of metaphors, while Chapter 5 has the least, which indicates that the number of tokens in each chapter of the novel has little correlation with the use of metaphor. The STTRs of Chapter 1, Chapter 5, Chapter 9, and Chapter 13 are relatively higher than the other chapters, which is related to the complexity of the storyline of the novel. The result shows that the vocabulary variation in the novel is moderate, the usage of the words is not complicated, and the storyline is comprehensible in general. Buck conveys her deep thoughts in a metaphorical language, which forms a unique writing style.

In order to study the metaphors in Pavilion of Women, the metaphorical keywords were firstly identified manually; subsequently, they were put into the search engine, and the final result was as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Occurrences of each metaphorical word in the corpus (x = metaphorical word; y = number of occurrences)

As can be seen from Figure 1, among the words forming structural metaphors, “love” and “life” rank 1st and 2nd, at 200 and 197; these are followed by “flower,” “tongue,” and “lamb” at 51, 14, and 3, respectively. Among the orientational metaphors, “down” appears the most frequently, at 205, and it also has the highest frequency of all the conceptual metaphors in the novel. The number of occurrences of “up” is 198 and words like “high,” “upward,” “downward,” and “backward” have a relatively lower number at 33, 8, 1, and 3, respectively. Moreover, “downward” appears the lowest number of times of all the conceptual metaphors, only once in the novel. Among the ontological metaphors, “wall” occurs the most frequently at 62, followed by “path,” “mountain,” and “chain” at 20, 9, and 7, respectively. However, the frequency of the word “cord” is the lowest, only appearing twice in the novel. Similarly, the corpus is used to retrieve the structural metaphors, ontological metaphors, and orientational metaphors, with their distribution as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Distribution of three types of metaphors in each chapter (x = chapter; y = number of metaphorical words)

As is shown in Figure 2, the metaphors are mainly distributed in Chapters 1, 3, 7, 9, and 12. Among them, Chapter 7 shows the most frequent use of metaphors at 13, while the least is in Chapter 5. Chapter 7 is the turning point of the novel, which includes three major dramatic events happening in Madame Wu’s family. They are Liangmo and Linyi’s marriage, Qiu Ming’s pregnancy, and Mr. Wu’s mother’s death, which evokes Madame Wu’s complex moods with both sweetness and bitterness. As Lakoff and Johnson put it: “People tend to use metaphor to structure the less concrete and inherently vaguer concepts (like those for the emotions) in terms of more concrete concepts, which are more clearly delineated in our experience” (113). Buck employed metaphor to express Madame Wu’s complex moods and thus developed the storyline in a vivid way.

The number of occurrences of each type of metaphor and its percentage in the total number of metaphors is presented in Table 2. In comparison, structural metaphors appear the most frequently, accounting for 50.88% of the total number; followed by ontological metaphors, accounting for 33.33%; and finally, orientational metaphors, accounting for 15.80%.

4.1 The Yin-Yang semiotic theory

The Yin-Yang symbol (Figure 3) appeared firstly in the book I Ching (or Book of Changes), dating back to three thousand years ago. The I Ching has been looked upon as the classic of classics and a schema of “heaven and earth” to Chinese people for quite a long time. The important sign that the text of the I Ching is different from the other Confucian classics is that there is a very neat, self-contained symbolic system related to the discourse system. The most basic composition is a Yin-symbol with a broken line “ ” and a Yang-symbol with a solid line “ ” and their meanings are expressed by the words attached to these symbols. The I Ching relies on the Yin-Yang mode, the abstract pair terms of which stand for flexibility and firmness, weakness and strength, stillness and movement, passivity and activity, sadness and happiness, depression and elation (I Ching 2006: xi). The interaction between Yin and Yang engenders the innumerous beings, that is, the eternal diversity of life and the world. The Yin-Yang symbol, known as the Taiji symbol, is a significant symbol to Chinese culture. It is presented in a circle, which is separated into two domains by a reverse S-shape line. The white domain is Yang, while the black domain is Yin. Meanwhile, the minor white circle in the Yin domain and the minor black circle in the Yang domain symbolize coexistence of Yin and Yang. Wherever you dichotomize the diameter of the entire circle, the two halves will eternally embrace some Yin and some Yang. These shapes are symbolic of the two energies and their interaction with each other that causes everything in the universe to happen. Their flowing, curvy shapes are symbolic of the constant change that takes place in the universe between Yin and Yang. Therefore, the relationship between them is inextricably interweaving and interpenetrating, and thus there is no absolute Yin or Yang in the universe. Each of these opposites produces another and cannot continue to dominate (Gu 2003). Hence, either domain has a crucial meaning, so does the whole Yin and Yang.

Figure 3

The symbol of Yin-Yang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_yang.svg)

The I Ching was provided as an accessible European translation during the 19th century, and in the past 100 years, Richard Wilhelm (1929), Wilhelm/Baynes (1950), and Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, promoted it to win an extensive popularity and fame in Europe and America. The I Ching, which embodies the wisdom of ancient Chinese sages, has been misunderstood as a fortune-telling book for a long time. However, with the development of science and technology and the blending of Eastern and Western cultures, it has attracted more and more attention from both Chinese and foreign scientific and cultural fields. Ritsema and Sabbadini (2005: 6) regard it as a mirror of the present.

As Wang (2016: 65) points out that the I Ching is one of the fields of semiotics which has unique Chinese characteristics unparalleled in the world. Hence, Yin-Yang semiotics can be defined as a scientific study of meaning-making and communication via the use of symbols. As “signified and signifier have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts” (Saussure 1959: 67), Yin-Yang semiotics has an enormous potential as a subject to be studied universally “since it deals with the signs and sign-processes that exist in every society” (Hakim 2013: 88). The Yin-Yang symbol presents something fundamentally and unbelievably complex, and the interaction of these two establish harmony, so it gives birth to things (Zhuangzi 1983). What Yin-Yang reflects is so vast that it embraces almost all the things in the universe, making it a classic instance of semiotics.

In addition, Yin-Yang as described in the I Ching is apolitical, having no laws, no policies, and no conventions. Moreover, it did not meet with any resistance, therefore, it was accepted by all of the three schools of traditional Chinese thought and became a universal foundation and cultural intermediary. It is not only advocated by Confucians for its diachronic lineage, inexplicit social structure, and morality, but also spoken of highly by Taoists for its spontaneity and cosmology and cherished by Legalists for its structure and order as well.

In conclusion, Yin and Yang are mutually interdependent and complementary, and they illustrate meaning by duality of nature. Under certain conditions, Yin can be converted into Yang and vice versa. They are the symbols of evoking all the opposites in pairs to have a harmonious interaction in the universe. When Yin and Yang keep balanced, they are equivalent but still separate. In a harmonious relationship, they interweave into an entire, as presented by the whirling Yin-Yang symbol. In addition, Yin-Yang semiotics is regarded as an ancient Chinese philosophy and a holistic, dynamic, and dialectical worldview (Li 2008). Consequently, the meaning of Yin and Yang penetrated almost every field of Chinese thought, affecting biology, astrology, literature, art, physics, and so on.

4.2 Construal of Pearl Buck’s metaphorical thinking

As can be seen from the above analysis, Buck’s usage of metaphor in Pavilion of Women to a great extent has a relationship with Yin-Yang semiotics and the social context at that time. Buck came to China with her parents four months after she was born, and she lived in China for forty years, during which she not only understood Chinese culture thoroughly, but also knew the customs of China. More importantly, she enjoyed Chinese literature. Yin-Yang thought infiltrated into Chinese everyday life and culture, especially in classic literary works, which influence readers’ cognition and attitude toward the world. Buck translated the classic novel All Men are Brothers into English in 1933, which became a great success in the world. In this classic novel, the understanding of chaos, the distinction between sin and sorrow, the dispute of loyalty, and the thoughts of Confucianism and Taoism were all related to Yin-Yang theory. Dutt (2008: 505) points out that the concept of Yin-Yang “provides the intellectual framework,” which fully reflects the scientific thinking of Chinese people. In Pavilion of Women, Buck employs metaphor to set up Madame Wu as an image of a pioneer perusing freedom and fighting against the feudal forces. Buck’s metaphorical thinking has a close relationship not only with Yin-Yang thought but also with the social context, especially with the transitional view of marriage in the first half of the twentieth century in China.

In the late Qing Dynasty, the concept of ritualized marriage prevailed in China. Confucianism and etiquette endow marriage with almost religious cultural value. Individuals must be married in order to complete a whole sense of being human, the succession of the family, and social connection. But this concept of marriage has nothing to do with the modern definition of love between men and women, and it was a ritualized code of conduct with Confucian ethics and family responsibilities as the core. This view of marriage regulates external more behavior and emphasizes “respect” in the inner feelings of couples more than love in the modern sense. According to the modern view, love is characterized by mutual affection, free choice, intimacy, and spiritual touch. There are conflicts with the ritualized concept of marriage in ancient China, such as the command of parents and the words of matchmakers. With the rise of the propaganda of overthrowing Confucian temples in the May Fourth Movement in 1919 in China, the traditional concept of a marriage based on etiquette was challenged. The concept of love in the May Fourth period, based on personal feelings, reflected the necessity of the existence of family and marriage. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Mandarin Duck and Butterflies schools ^[4] and the New Culture Movement began to introduce the concept of love after the Western Romantic Movement into China. This kind of love emphasized admiration, intimacy, and appreciation of partners. This new concept redefined the meaning of “love” and required that marriage and the union of men and women must be based on “love.” This new concept of love, combined with the prevailing individualism, anarchism, and liberalism at that time, profoundly changed China’s culture of love, and gave birth to a large number of new literary and ideological works exploring love, calling to break through the shackles of family, patriarchy, and husband’s rights. In the eyes of some anarchists, they even criticized the rationality of the existence of the marriage system and they thought the purely individualistic concept of love was bound to destroy the anti-human system of marriage and the meaning of love and marriage lay entirely in the “free personality,” which was restrained by the system of marriage. Some abolitionists even imagined that a society without marriage would be as good as the “Datong” society in a Confucian legend.

The above were the cognitive context and social context in which Pearl Buck wrote this novel and “once the context is established, certain domains of meaning are activated within the experiential, interpersonal and textual semantics” (Bartlett 2013: 5). As Lakoff and Johnson (1980a) argue, metaphor is like a sense which structures human experience and guides our understanding of our own and other worlds. In this novel, based on her experience in China, Pearl Buck uses “Yin” to symbolize “female” energy, such as femininity, weakness, darkness, softness, while she uses “Yang” to stand for “male” energy, such as masculinity, the sun, strength, brightness, and hardness. She indicates that a happy family can be achieved via the complementary relationship between Yin (women) and Yang (men), keeping a relevant balance through a dynamic interaction. Taking Example (24) as an example, Madame Wu thinks in terms of fertility, that men and women should be complementary and cooperative in a harmonious way.

1. Heaven, valuing only life, had given seed to man, and earth to woman. Of earth there was plenty, but of what use was earth without seed? Therefore, must the very last seed in a man’s loin be planted, and that this last seed might bear strong fruit, as the man grew old the seed must be planted in better and stronger soil. (Buck 1946: 49)

Example (24) shows Madame Wu’s construal of the relationship between men and women. She says Heaven cherished life and had given “seed” and “earth” to man and woman and only seeds that are planted in the soil can bear fruit. In relation to the Yin-Yang cognitive context, the complementarity of Yin and Yang can make life prosperous. However, the ability of a woman to bear children is not as long as a man’s life, so when a man grows older, his “seed” must be planted into more fertile “soil.” According to Yin-Yang theory, everything in the world is divided into Yin and Yang. In a marriage, a female attaches to “Yin” while a male pertains to “Yang.” Through the use of metaphor, Buck expresses that Yin and Yang should be complementary in a marriage, which is a challenge both to the unequal social status of men and women and to the traditional thought of “a male is superior to a female.” In Example (25), the mating of the “body” is metaphorized as “the foundation of the house.” The target domain BODY has all the qualities of the source domain FOUNDATION, namely, the peaceful coexistence of man and woman, as a harmonious state of balance between Yin and Yang, which is the foundation of a marriage. Throughout the ages, the Chinese have regarded the relationship between men and women in a marriage as a coordinated and complementary relationship. In short, Yin and Yang reconcile and complement each other, which can facilitate a harmonious marriage.

1. But the body is the foundation of the house the two build. Soul and mind, and whatever else, is the roof, the decoration, whatever one adds to a fine house. But all this fails without the foundation. (201)

2. But when I brought you here, I myself did not understand love. I thought men and women could be mated like male and female in the beasts. Now I know that men and women hate each other when they are mated only as beasts. For we are not beasts. We can unite ourselves without a touch of the hands, or a look of the eyes. We can love even when the flesh is dead. It is not the flesh that binds us together. (327)

Example (26) also shows this thought, the property of the source domain MALE AND FEMALE BEASTS is mapped onto the target domain MALE AND FEMALE HUMAN BEINGS. However, as Madame Wu states, “men and women hate each other when they are mated only as beasts.” In beasts, only the flesh can bind male and female together; however, human beings are not beasts. In a marriage, love can bind men and women together, which also confirms that in a marriage, men and women can be complementary and live together in a harmonious way, just like Yin and Yang complementing each other can realize a harmonious relationship.

In addition, in the novel, there is a pond in Madame Wu’s house, in which goldfish dart in and out of the lilies, which reflects Chinese Yin-Yang semiotic theory. According to this, everything in the world is divided into Yin and Yang, and plants are no exceptions. In Chinese literature, lilies attach to “Yin” and symbolize female for two properties: one is that they are similar to the form of the vulva; the other is that their multiple seeds symbolize reproduction and tenacious vitality. On the other hand, fish, pertaining to “Yang,” darting in and out freely in the pond, is a metaphor for a harmonious relationship between the lilies and the fish, like Yin and Yang.