Conceptual metonymies and metaphors behind SHUI (WATER) and HUO (FIRE) in ancient and modern Chinese
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Chun Lan
und
Dongmei Jia
Abstract
This paper investigates the conceptual metonymies and metaphors behind SHUI (水, water) and HUO (火, fire), two of the Five Elements (五行, wu-xing) in traditional Chinese thought, as recorded in ancient and modern Chinese. Our analysis shows that: (1) SHUI in ancient Chinese is built around the conceptual metonymies SHUI FOR FEATURES OF WATER, SHUI FOR BODY LIQUID and SHUI FOR BODIES OF WATER and the conceptual metaphors THOSE WITH FEATURES OF WATER ARE SHUI and THOSE WITH FEATURES OF SHUI XING ARE SHUI. (2) HUO in ancient Chinese is built around the metonymies HUO FOR FEATURES OF FIRE and HUO FOR THE POWER/DESTRUCTION OF FIRE and the metaphors THOSE WITH FEATURES OF FIRE ARE HUO and THOSE WITH FEATURES OF HUO XING ARE HUO. (3) SHUI and HUO in modern Chinese show an overall similarity with their ancient counterparts, the main differences being that the metaphor THOSE WITH FEATURES OF SHUI XING ARE SHUI is absent from modern Chinese and that the metaphor THOSE WITH FEATURES OF HUO XING ARE HUO has a much narrower coverage in modern Chinese. We discuss what this kind of selective inheritance suggests about the development of Chinese people’s conceptualization of the world.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Language(s), culture(s), ethnicity(-ies), social class and religious background: intersections in researcher’s identity and ethnography
- Doing ethnography among Latinos in London and Barcelona: languages, genders, and ethnicities
- Preparing the milk and honey: between ethnography and academia as a racially minoritised academic
- Language Choice and Researcher’s Stance in a Multilingual Ethnographic Fieldwork
- Regular Articles
- Does context really collapse in social media interaction?
- Conceptual metonymies and metaphors behind SHUI (WATER) and HUO (FIRE) in ancient and modern Chinese
- Strategy development and cross-linguistic transfer in foreign and first language writing
- Thai university students studying in China: Identity, imagined communities, and communities of practice
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Language(s), culture(s), ethnicity(-ies), social class and religious background: intersections in researcher’s identity and ethnography
- Doing ethnography among Latinos in London and Barcelona: languages, genders, and ethnicities
- Preparing the milk and honey: between ethnography and academia as a racially minoritised academic
- Language Choice and Researcher’s Stance in a Multilingual Ethnographic Fieldwork
- Regular Articles
- Does context really collapse in social media interaction?
- Conceptual metonymies and metaphors behind SHUI (WATER) and HUO (FIRE) in ancient and modern Chinese
- Strategy development and cross-linguistic transfer in foreign and first language writing
- Thai university students studying in China: Identity, imagined communities, and communities of practice
