The meaning-making and semiotic value of Chinese words: a contextual perspective

3.1 Situational context of X+lǐng

The morphological pattern of X+lǐng in Chinese originates from the extraction and analogy of báilǐng (白领) and lánlǐng (蓝领). The Chinese words báilǐng and lánlǐng are translated from the English words white-collar and blue-collar. These four words are clearly related to the actual occupational division of labor, and the words’ meanings are derived from the metonymy of the whole word. By deconstructing the form and the meaning of the words, language users assign the distinctive word-forming component of the whole word with the distinctive semantic component. This caused bái ‘white’ and lán ‘blue’ to have specific meanings of occupational characteristics in the morphological pattern, namely “brain work” and “manual work.” Moreover, the X+lǐng morphological pattern generates a constructional meaning that represents a person engaged in a certain profession, so the constructional meaning is embedded with a situational context. The meaning-making of the word needs to restore the semantic content of X in the situational context, namely, X represents the meaning related to a specific occupation. The constructional meaning of X+lǐng can only appear in this structure, and any one of the components such as X or lǐng cannot represent the meaning of the construction alone.

The words X+lǐng in Chinese mainly include báilǐng, lánlǐng, fěnlǐng (粉领), huīlǐng (灰领), lǜlǐng (绿领), hēilǐng (黑领), hónglǐng (红领), chénglǐng (橙领), jīnlǐng (金领), etc. The definitions are as follows:

Báilǐng: refers to employees who are engaged in mental work, such as managers, technicians, government officials, etc. They usually wear white shirts at work. (MCD7: 25)

Lánlǐng: refers to workers engaged in manual labor in some countries or regions, who usually wear blue overalls at work. (MCD7: 775)

Fěnlǐng: refers to working women who are engaged in secretarial, typing, etc. in some countries and regions. Also called fěnhónglǐng. (MCD7: 385)

Huīlǐng: originally referred to car mechanics because their work clothes were mostly gray. Later, it refers to people with compound technical talents who have both theoretical knowledge and practical ability. (MCD7: 578)

Lǜlǐng: refers to people who advocate a healthy lifestyle, love outdoor sports, support public welfare, and are enthusiastic about environmental protection. (NCW2007: 236)

Hēilǐng: refers to people who do dirty, tiring or menial work. (NWD: 469)

Hónglǐng: refers to people who work in state institutions. (NWDNC: 218)

Chénglǐng: refers to practitioners of e-commerce, especially those who make profits through the Taobao alliance. It is called this because the main color of the Taobao website is orange. (NCW2011: 19)

Jīnlǐng: refers to senior scientific and technical personnel and senior management personnel with higher income in the enterprise, such as software design engineers, company department managers, etc. (MCD7: 675)

The meaning of X in X+lǐng is not its inherent semantics, but a special definition resulting from semantic transference in the context of X+lǐng: For example, fěn ‘pink’ refers to women in fěnlǐng, which is not the inherent semantics of fěn. In the context of X+lǐng, fěn is the typical color of the clothing of the practitioners referred to by fěnlǐng, which has a higher cognitive salience. Besides, pink is a typical color of women’s clothing and supplies and often appears in the same cognitive domain as women. The co-occurrence experience makes metonymy possible. The cognitive mechanism of huīlǐng, hēilǐng, hónglǐng, lǜlǐng, chénglǐng is similar to that of fěnlǐng: huī ‘gray’ is a common color of car mechanics’ work clothes; hēi ‘black’ is often associated with a dirty or menial work environment; hóng ‘red’ usually symbolizes revolution or political consciousness in mainland China; lǜ ‘green’ usually appears in the same cognitive domain as health and environmental protection; chéng ‘orange’ is a prominent color on Taobao. These all provide cognitive possibilities for the semantic transfer of color words. The meaning-making of jīnlǐng involves metaphorical operation: “There is a structural similarity between ‘gold is a rare metal with high market value’ and ‘senior scientific and technical personnel and managers are a minority knowledge group and have high social value’, and these two form a mapping relationship between rarity and high value” (Li 2019a: 79). The fěn and huī in fěnlĭng and huīlĭng are related to the occupational clothing color of the object, but the hēi, hóng, lǜ, chéng, jīn ‘golden’ in hēilǐng, hónglǐng, lǜlǐng, chénglǐng, jīnlǐng generated by the analogy structure of the morphological pattern have nothing to do with the occupational clothing color of the object, but is related to the abstract symbolic meaning of the color, which comes from metonymy or metaphor.

It can be seen from the above analysis that in the process of the meaning-making of X+lǐng words, the inherent semantics of the word-forming components provides the basis for meaning construction, the situational context embedded with the morphological pattern forces the word-forming components to undergo a semantic shift, and cognitive mechanisms such as metonymy and metaphor provide the possibility of semantic transfer.

Through cross-language comparisons, we can find that X+lǐng words in Chinese can be divided into three categories: 1) words that have corresponding words in English with the same concept, such as báilǐng, lánlǐng, huīlǐng, fěnlǐng, lǜlǐng; 2) words created by the word creator in the context of Chinese culture without corresponding words and concepts in English, such as hónglǐng (*red-collar), chénglǐng (*orange-collar); 3) words created by the word creator in the context of Chinese culture that have corresponding words in English but correspond to different concepts, such as hēilǐng (black-collar), which refers to people who do dirty, tiring or menial work in Chinese, but refers to a miner in English. Also, there is a category of X+-collar words in English that have no Chinese counterparts. For example, scarlet-collar refers to a woman who owns or operates internet pornographic websites. The cross-language comparative analysis shows that the semantic transference of word-forming components in the situational context is affected by cultural factors: “The definition of a word consists partly of placing it within its cultural context” (Malinowski 1935: 18).

What is the relationship between situational context and cultural context in functional grammar?

The context for the meaning potential – for language as a system – is the context of culture. The context for the particular instances – for language as processes of text – is the situational context. And just as a piece of text is an instance of language, so a situation is an instance of culture. So there is a proportion here. The context for an instance of language (text) is an instance of culture (situation). And the context for the system that lies behind each text (language) is the system which lies behind each situation – namely, the culture. (Halliday 1999: 7)

In other words, the relationship between situational and cultural contexts is of instantiating and being instantiated. That is, situational context is an instantiation of cultural context, and the cultural context is instantiated by the situational context: “Culture instantiated in situation, as system instantiated in text […] a situation is an instance of culture” (Halliday 1999: 8). The two contexts target different research objects, “the environment for language as text is the situational context, the environment for language as system is the context of culture” (Halliday 1999: 1). In Halliday’s view, cultural context acts on the level of the language system, without contacting with language text directly. However, analyzing the examples of X+lǐng and X-collar, we find that if one of the word-forming components undergoes semantic transfer, the transfer mechanism will be affected by both the situational context and the cultural context. Although the cultural context is a relatively abstract background context, it not only acts on the system level of language, but also complements or competes with the specific context of language, thus affecting the meaning-making process of the word. For example, hónglǐng refers to a person who works in a state agency, but hóng does not correctly construct meaning in the context of ‘representing a person engaged in a certain profession.’ Its metonymic mechanism needs the regulation of cultural context. Cultures have identity and difference, that is to say, under the influence of cultural identity, words with the same meaning and lexical structure in different languages will have the same or similar signified, such as lǜlǐng and green-collar referring to environmental protection workers; under the influence of cultural differences, words with the same lexical structure in different languages will have different signified. For example, hēilǐng in Chinese refers to people who are engaged in dirty, exhausting or menial work, while black-collar in English refers specifically to miners; the English word scarlet-collar is related to the meaning of scarlet in the English cultural context.^[3]

3.2 Situational context of X+mén

Compared with the cultural context, the situational context is a relatively specific context and a product of the instantiation of cultural context. But it is also an abstract context that expresses categories. In this context, the characters, behaviors, and characteristics are of a general nature. In contrast, there is a context that expresses specific events in language, in which the characters, behaviors, and characteristics are specific. The abstract situational context stems from the extraction of the specific context of an event, and the analysis of situational context usually requires to be restored to the event context. Words are closely related to a specific event when they are produced, and the signified of words is the person, behavior, or characteristic in the event. When language users use the same word to refer to similar things, behaviors, or characteristics in different events, the word then acquires the meaning of the situational context, and the meaning binds the words as signifiers and the things, behaviors, or characteristics that they signified. Take X+mén as an example. The morphological pattern X+mén appeared in the 1980s. This usage is included in the definition of the entry mén in the MCD7, as “by referring to negative events that arouse public attention.”

If a word is only associated with one event, the meaning construction of the word must be restored to the context of the event, for example, one of the examples of X+gate is Irangate. This word has been produced since the 1980s and specifically refers to a scandal occurring during the Reagan administration in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran and illegally used the profits to continue funding an army of rebels in Nicaragua. The meaning-making process of the word has always been associated with the context of this specific event, and the homogeneous event has not occurred again, so the context of the event has not developed into a situational context.

When a word is associated with two or more homogenous events, the construction basis of the meaning of the word develops from a certain event context to a certain situational context. For example, when the diànhuàmén (电话门) came into being, it specifically referred to the event that some teams in Serie A headed by Juventus instructed referees to manipulate the game. As the team’s phone calls were recorded as evidence and exposed, it was widely reported. But after that, homogeneous events continued to occur, and the signified of the diànhuàmén also developed from being closely related to the event context to being closely related to the situational context. For example:

The event context of diànhuàmén in example (1) is highly homogeneous with the event context of the earliest diànhuàmén of Juventus, which refers to the match-fixing event exposed through telephone recording. However, the context of the diànhuàmén in example (2) is far from the context of the diànhuàmén in Juventus, referring to the political scandal exposed through telephone recordings. With the occurrence of homogeneous events, the meaning-making of the word does not need to be restored to the event context, but can be achieved through the situational context. For example, the definition of diànhuàmén in the dictionary is “Incidents of invasion of citizens’ privacy or other fraud incidents related to telephone communications” (NCW2006: 11).

The meaning-making of words needs to call on encyclopedic knowledge, but the use of encyclopedic knowledge needs to yield to the situational context. Li (2019b: 98) pointed out that “in context (author’s note: this context is the situational context), all encyclopedic knowledge will be subject to contextual regulation, contextual information has absolute priority to be used, and context can control degree of salience.” In other words, encyclopedic knowledge can provide multiple possibilities for the meaning-making of words, but the situational context will narrow the possible scope of it. Taking the diànhuàmén as an example, if the meaning of the word is constructed only through word-forming components and situational context, we can know that the diànhuàmén refers to scandals or events related to telephones, but how are the diànhuà ‘telephones’ related to scandals or events? The daily collocations of diànhuà include dǎ (打) ‘call,’ jiē (接) ‘receive,’ and tīng (听) ‘listen.’ These collocation words reflect the behavior of diànhuà in terms of encyclopedic knowledge: call, receive, and listen. Only when the word is restored to the situational context or event context, as in example (1) or (2), can it be clear that diànhuà means exposure by telephone recording.

To sum up, not only does the meaning-making at the discourse level need to restore the sentence to the situational context for analysis, but the meaning-making at the lexical level also needs to restore the meaning of the word-forming components in the situational context, cultural context, and event context. Among them, the situational context is usually closely related to a specific lexical structure.

4.1 Structural context of yǒu+N

Many scholars believe that the neutral nouns in the yǒu+N structure in Chinese have lexical semantic deviations (Chen 2019; Rong and Ding 2014; Shen 1996; Wen and Liu 2014; Zou 1986, 1988). Whether it is a positive or a negative deviation, it indicates how many, how large, how good, and how long N is, that is, it has the meaning of ‘large quantity and deep degree’ (Li 2012; Tan 2000; Wu 2013).^[4] Does the meaning belong to yǒu or N? Let’s take a look at the definitions from different dictionaries first:

Yǒu (有) [definition 5] many, large: ∼xuéwèn |∼jīngyàn |∼le niánjì. (MCD3: 1526)

Yǒu (有) [definition 1] possessed. […] b) some nouns can be combined with you to have a meaning of deep without using the degree adverb. (EHWMC: 630)

Niántóur (年头儿) [definition 2] years: Tā gàn zhè yī háng, yǒu ∼le. (MCD3: 927)

Excluding the inconsistent treatment of yǒu and N, the revised edition of MCD3 defines yǒu as well as some of N (niántóur) as meaning “large quantity and deep degree,” which shows that MCD3 has not yet clarified how the meaning came into being. In contrast, EHWMC directly states that the meaning of “large quantity and deep degree” comes from “some nouns combined with yǒu,” which obviously considers that the structure yǒu+N expresses the meaning rather than any component of the structure. This view is reasonable.

The structural context of yǒu+N generates and constructs the meaning of ‘large quantity and deep degree.’ Without any one of the components, the other component cannot express the meaning alone. If the components in this structure are homogeneously replaced, such as replacing yǒu with other possessive verbs yōngyǒu (拥有) ‘posses,’ jùbèi (具备) ‘have,’ the structure can hardly be established. If N is replaced with other nouns representing concrete things, such as zhuōzi (桌子) ‘table’ and shuǐ (水) ‘water’ without a degree, the structure only means possession, not ‘large quantity, deep degree.’ If N is replaced with nouns having a certain degree, such as gèzi (个子) ‘height’ or péngyou (朋友) ‘friend,’ the structure can hardly be established or indicate the meaning. Only the structure of yǒu+N (N is an abstract noun with degree) can form a connection with the meaning of ‘large quantity and deep degree’ to form a mutually dependent form–meaning pair.

The yǒu+N structure is a semi-schematic construction (Hilpert 2013: 5; Traugott 2007). The part-of-speech and semantics of the substantive component yǒu are determined; the part-of-speech of the schema component N is also determined, and the semantic generics of N are concentrated; the possessive structure relationship between yǒu and N is clear. These conditions ensure that the meaning of ‘large quantity and deep degree’ that emerges from the structural context of yǒu+N can be fully assumed and explained by the structure (as in the treatment of the EHWMC), instead of assigning the structural context meaning to a certain component.

When faced with practical applications such as dictionary interpretation and Chinese information processing, there is still a problem of where to attribute the meaning of structural context. As far as semi-schematic constructions like yǒu+N are concerned, the definition of the structural context meaning can be placed under the entity component yǒu, which has a clear form and meaning. As in EHWMC and the Modern Chinese dictionary, fifth to seventh editions, 有[definition 5], which indicates ‘how much or how large something [often abstract things] that is possessed is,’ is handled in this way.

However, the structural context meaning of yǒu+N indicates ‘large quantity and deep degree’ of the N (as can be seen from the interpretations of EHWMC and the Modern Chinese dictionary). It is no wonder that the sense of everyday language is likely to assign this structural context meaning to N. And the construction of this sense of everyday language for the meaning of N ‘large quantity and deep degree’ is obviously realized in the structural context of yǒu+N, because if N is not in the structure of yǒu+N, the sense of everyday language will generally not assume that N has the meaning.^[5]

Compared with the X+lǐng and X+mén discussed above, whose meaning-making is based on the situational context, the semi-schematic construction yǒu+N is also a kind of marked structure, but the marker yǒu of the yǒu+N structure is not a lexical marker like lǐng or mén, but a syntactic marker. The scope of the syntactic marker is beyond the scope of words and acts on linear combinations at the syntactic (phrase) level. This section discusses the influence or restriction of the structure yǒu+N with syntactic markers on the meaning construction process of N (that is, the constituent components of the structure) in it, and does not discuss the meaning construction of the linear combination at the syntactic levels.

4.2 Constructional context of causative compound verbs

In Modern Chinese, there is a verb-object compound word type that express causative meaning, such as fēngxiōng (丰胸) ‘augment breast,’ jiànshēn (健身) ‘keep fit with exercise,’ měiróng (美容) ‘make the appearance beautiful,’ xīngguó (兴国) ‘rejuvenate a country.’ These expressions can be formalized as X+N_causee, which is a schema construction (Meng 2016). The causative meaning is often in the same way as the verbal or adjective component X in the compound word, as explained in MCD7:

Fēng (丰¹) [definition 2] make it plump: ∼rǔ | ∼xiōng. (MCD7: 387)

Jiàn (健) [definition 2] make it strong: ∼nǎo | ∼shēn| ∼wèi. (MCD7: 642)

Měi (美¹) [definition 2] make it beautiful: ∼róng|∼fà. (MCD7: 888)

Where does the causative meaning of X come from? In other words, how is the causative meaning of X constructed?

Meng (2016: 64–66) has demonstrated that X+N_causee is a causative verb-object construction in Modern Chinese.^[6] It is expressed as a prominent structural context, and its components need to meet certain syntactic and semantic access conditions, namely, X is mainly a monosyllabic intransitive verbal or adjective with a resultant meaning and N_causee is mainly a monosyllabic noun component. The examples of this lexical construction are specific compound words.

Excluding the rhythm, whether it is at the syntactic or lexical level, a typical grammatical function of X is to have no object component. If N appears after X, then N will be combined with X to form an attributive-head structure of X+N, such as fēijī (飞机) ‘airplane,’ liúshuǐ (流水) ‘running water,’ gāokōng (高空) ‘welkin,’ měinǚ (美女) ‘beauty.’ If X and N are combined into a verb-object structure, then X breaks through the restrictions of the original grammatical rules and forms a new structure with objects. Naturally, the meaning will not be the same as the original meaning, but will follow with the change of the contextual structure, which means constructing a new meaning that fits the new structure. In this verb-object structure, X and N form a causative semantic relationship, and the implicit resultant meaning of X appears on N as a causative result. In this way, the construction of the causative verb-object compound construction X+N_causee has completed the construction meaning-making ‘to cause N_causee to act, behave, have the traits of, or feel like X, and to have the result of X’ (Meng 2016: 66).

In theory, this causative constructional meaning is the meaning of the entire structure of X+N_causee. If X is separated from this verb-object structure, it is impossible to generate causative meaning. It is the co-existence of two word-forming components of X and N_causee in this verb-object structure that makes the emergence of constructional meaning beyond the components’ meaning. Therefore, the causative meaning presented by X in the dictionary or the causative meaning perceived by language users is constructed and solidified in the context of verb-object structure such as X+N_causee. Conversely, the constructional meaning of X+N_causee cannot be constructed without the two components of X and N. This embodies the interdependence between the word-forming components and their lexical structures in terms of form and meaning.

However, when people use or talk about causative meaning, they can’t call it a structure, and they don’t even realize that there is such a causative structure at all: “Due to the frequent use of causative usage of verbs or adjectives, the causative meaning of some words gradually matures, which leads to the stabilization of causative meaning. The causative meaning no longer relies on the verb-object structure to reflect the meaning of causative, and it is fully assumed by the verb” (Tan 1997). To “facilitate learning, understanding and mastery, and also for the interpretation of dictionary,” “the causative meaning of the structure and word are treated uniformly, and the causative meaning is attributed to the verb” (Tan 1997). It is the dictionary processing method of fēng (丰) ‘plump,’ jiàn (健) ‘strengthen,’ and měi (美) ‘beautify.’ Obviously, the causative meaning of X inherits the structural meaning because of its long-standing appearance in the causative verb-object context, which is the transfer of the constructional meaning to X meaning (Meng 2016: 103–105). It can be seen that structural context plays a significant role in determining the meaning of certain components.

The causative verb-object compound construction is the result of the diachronic lexicalization of verb syntax in ancient Chinese, and the final result of the instantiation of this construction is compound words of X+N_causee. This process is the embodiment of the idea that “lexis is the most delicate grammar” (Halliday 1961: 267).

From the above two typical structural contexts of yǒu+N and X+N_causee, the meaning-making of Chinese words is closely related to the nature of the structural context. The yǒu+N type structural context is a marked explicit structure, and the meaning-making of words is also explicit. One can make the meaning of a word based on the structure without assigning a structural meaning to any one of the components (dictionaries may have different operations). Relatively speaking, the context of the structure of the X+N_causee is a complete schema structure with access conditions. Although the structural relationship in the form of a word is analyzable online, this analysis has historical origins and often needs to come from linguistics. Therefore, this kind of structural context is not as obvious as the yǒu+N in the meaning-making process of words, and it is a kind of hidden structural context. Moreover, due to the complete schematization of such structural contexts, the grammatical and semantic properties of its components are relatively vague, and the certainty is not easily known from the surface form of the structure. To facilitate the users’ understanding, the structural meaning is often transferred to a certain component, and the construction is more to provide a sufficient structural context for the new meaning-making of the component. The components of these two types of structural contexts are strongly dependent on each other, and both are indispensable.