Speech organs and linguistic activity/function in Chinese
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Ning Yu
Abstract
This chapter investigates the Chinese cultural understanding of speech and language based on the metonymic chain from speech organ to language as proposed by Radden (2004): speech organ → speaking → speech → language. The focus is on three metonymies, speech organ for speaking, speech organ for speech, and speech organ for language. It is found that the first two are abundant in conventionalized expressions, but speech organ for language, widely attested across languages (Radden 2004), is not realized lexically in Chinese. While speech organ for language is not manifested in the Chinese lexicon, it is nevertheless realized in its logographic writing system as components of the characters. Chinese characters representing ‘language’ and ‘speech’ contain within them the ‘mouth’ radical as a semantic component. This finding provides an interesting and telling example of how the general cognitive principle of embodiment can be realized in and embraced by a culture-specific environment.
Abstract
This chapter investigates the Chinese cultural understanding of speech and language based on the metonymic chain from speech organ to language as proposed by Radden (2004): speech organ → speaking → speech → language. The focus is on three metonymies, speech organ for speaking, speech organ for speech, and speech organ for language. It is found that the first two are abundant in conventionalized expressions, but speech organ for language, widely attested across languages (Radden 2004), is not realized lexically in Chinese. While speech organ for language is not manifested in the Chinese lexicon, it is nevertheless realized in its logographic writing system as components of the characters. Chinese characters representing ‘language’ and ‘speech’ contain within them the ‘mouth’ radical as a semantic component. This finding provides an interesting and telling example of how the general cognitive principle of embodiment can be realized in and embraced by a culture-specific environment.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Introduction 1
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Part 1. European perspectives
- The relevance of embodiment to lexical and collocational meaning 23
- Dynamic body parts in Estonian figurative descriptions of emotion 41
- Contrasting body parts 71
- head and eye in German and Indonesian figurative uses 93
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Part 2. East Asian perspectives
- Speech organs and linguistic activity/function in Chinese 117
- Inner and outer body parts 149
- A cultural-linguistic look at Japanese ‘eye’ expressions 171
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Part 3. Middle Eastern and North African perspectives
- Conceptualizations of cheshm ‘eye’ in Persian 197
- Figurative dimensions of 3ayn ‘eye’ in Tunisian Arabic 213
- The apocalypse happens when the feet take the position of the head 241
- Index 257
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1. European perspectives
- The relevance of embodiment to lexical and collocational meaning 23
- Dynamic body parts in Estonian figurative descriptions of emotion 41
- Contrasting body parts 71
- head and eye in German and Indonesian figurative uses 93
-
Part 2. East Asian perspectives
- Speech organs and linguistic activity/function in Chinese 117
- Inner and outer body parts 149
- A cultural-linguistic look at Japanese ‘eye’ expressions 171
-
Part 3. Middle Eastern and North African perspectives
- Conceptualizations of cheshm ‘eye’ in Persian 197
- Figurative dimensions of 3ayn ‘eye’ in Tunisian Arabic 213
- The apocalypse happens when the feet take the position of the head 241
- Index 257
