This study presents a semantic analysis of how emotions and emotional experiences are described in Chinese. It focuses on
conventionalized expressions in Chinese, namely compounds and idioms, which contain body-part terms. The body-part terms are
divided into two classes: those denoting external body parts and those denoting internal body parts or organs. It is found that,
with a few exceptions, the expressions involving external body parts are originally metonymic, describing emotions in terms of
their externally observable bodily events and processes. However, once conventionalized, these expressions are also used
metaphorically regardless of emotional symptoms or gestures. The expressions involving internal organs evoke imaginary bodily
images that are primarily metaphorical. It is found that the metaphors, though imaginary in nature, are not really all arbitrary.
They seem to have a bodily or psychological basis, although they are inevitably influenced by cultural models.
2020. The Concatenation of Body Part Words and Emotions from the Perspective of Chinese Radicals. In Chinese Lexical Semantics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11831], ► pp. 628 ff.
Robbins Schug, Gwen
2020. Touching the Surface: Biological, Behavioural, and Emotional Aspects of Plagiocephaly at Harappa. In The Mother-Infant Nexus in Anthropology [Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, ], ► pp. 235 ff.
Savina, Elena & Kayan Phoebe Wan
2017. Cultural Pathways to Socio-Emotional Development and Learning. Journal of Relationships Research 8
2013. Psycho-collocational expressives in Burmese. In The Aesthetics of Grammar, ► pp. 255 ff.
Woon Yee Ho, Judy
2009. The language of anger in Chinese and English narratives. International Journal of Bilingualism 13:4 ► pp. 481 ff.
Xu, Zhengye & Duo Liu
2022. Perceptual simulation in language comprehension and Chinese character reading among third-grade Hong Kong children. Educational Psychology 42:5 ► pp. 587 ff.
Yang, Wenhui
2020. News Discourse and Cognitive Studies. In A Cross-Cultural Study of Commercial Media Discourses, ► pp. 9 ff.
Ye, Zhengdao
2004. The Chinese Folk Model of Facial Expressions: a Linguistic Perspective. Culture & Psychology 10:2 ► pp. 195 ff.
Yu, Ning
2004. The eyes for sight and mind. Journal of Pragmatics 36:4 ► pp. 663 ff.
Zhou, Pin, Hugo Critchley, Sarah Garfinkel & Ya Gao
2021. The conceptualization of emotions across cultures: a model based on interoceptive neuroscience. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 125 ► pp. 314 ff.
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