Abstract
This study analyzes the linguistic patterns via both qualitative and quantitative data that manifest the underlying conceptual metaphor life is a show in Chinese. It starts with an analysis of the performing arts frame as the source domain of the show metaphor. The frame comprises three major aspects: people, performance, and venue, and each of them has a focal element, respectively role, opera, and stage. It argues that the second one, opera, which refers to “Chinese opera”, a prominent form of performing arts in traditional Chinese culture, is the central element that dominates the whole frame. A systematic qualitative analysis of linguistic data shows that, because its source domain centers on Chinese opera, the life is a show metaphor generates a large number of culture-specific linguistic instantiations in Chinese. A quantitative perspective supported by corpus data reinforces the argument that this metaphor plays a central role in the Chinese conceptualization of events and phenomena in various domains of life, constituting a core component of the Chinese cultural model of life. The study concludes that the show metaphor has a salient subversion life is an opera in Chinese, in contrast with its sister life is a play found salient in English.
Acknowledgments
We want to express our sincere thanks to John Newman, the Editor, an Associate Editor, and three anonymous reviewers of Cognitive Linguistics for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Needless to say, we are solely responsible for any deficiencies that may remain.
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Appendix
Examples of Chinese visual art that are multimodal (visual, verbal, and calligraphic) realizations of “Life is an opera” as cultural artifacts

These images are taken as examples from a large pool of “images for 人生如戏” in Google search, accessed in July, 2015 at the following link: https://www.google.com/search?q=images+for+%E4%BA%BA%E7%94%9F%E5%A6%82%E6%88%8F&biw=1366&bih=657&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CBwQsARqFQoTCLTJ8J_3_McCFYFZPgodOgQMLA
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Metaphor in culture: LIFE IS A SHOW in Chinese
- When do language comprehenders mentally simulate locations?
- With the future coming up behind them: Evidence that Time approaches from behind in Vietnamese
- When variables align: A Bayesian multinomial mixed-effects model of English permissive constructions
- The role of DO-auxiliary in subject-auxiliary inversion: Developing Langacker’s notion of existential negotiation
- Book Reviews
- Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini: Word classes: Nature, typology and representations
- Michel Achard: Impersonals and Other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Metaphor in culture: LIFE IS A SHOW in Chinese
- When do language comprehenders mentally simulate locations?
- With the future coming up behind them: Evidence that Time approaches from behind in Vietnamese
- When variables align: A Bayesian multinomial mixed-effects model of English permissive constructions
- The role of DO-auxiliary in subject-auxiliary inversion: Developing Langacker’s notion of existential negotiation
- Book Reviews
- Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini: Word classes: Nature, typology and representations
- Michel Achard: Impersonals and Other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French