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Part of
Language, Culture and Identity – Signs of Life
Edited by Vera da Silva Sinha, Ana Moreno-Núñez and Zhen Tian
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 13] 2020
► pp. 141–156

Chapter 7
Cultural “Signs of life” in politics

A case study of eulogistic idioms for Taiwanese politicians

 | Masaryk University
This chapter presents a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of Mandarin eulogistic idioms used for politicians as a sub-genre of political communication. The entire collection of idioms is taken from the online eulogy request system in Taiwan and contains 16 idioms. In the analysis of the idioms, it is shown that in addition to conceptual metaphor and metonymy, Cognitive Grammar is another useful theoretical construct in analysing political eulogies. The analysis, in addition, explicates how various cultural conceptualizations and allusions are involved as a basis for understanding the eulogistic expressions. At the social level, a comparison between the Taiwanese political eulogies and data from Western cultures shows that the social role played by the deceased and the mourner is another important sign of life in Taiwanese culture.
Keywords: metaphor, metonymy, profile, textile metaphor
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Applications of Cognitive Linguistics in the language of politics
    • Previous studies on life and death in Cognitive Linguistics
  • Findings
    • Metaphorical idioms with country or people in scope
    • Metaphorical idioms with country or people in profile
    • Metaphorical idioms with country or people in the base
    • Metaphorical idioms with allusions
    • textile metaphor in Chinese idioms of politics
  • Cultural signs of life in Taiwanese political eulogies
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Databases consulted
Published online: 30 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.13.07lu
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