This study is a semantic analysis of metonymic and metaphoric expressions involving body-part terms for the face in Chinese. These expressions are discussed regarding four perceived roles of face, namely, as highlight of appearance and look, as indicator of emotion and character, as focus of interaction and relationship, and as locus of dignity and prestige. It is argued that the figurative extensions are based on some biological facts about our face: it is the most distinctive part on the interactive side of our body capable of revealing our inner states. Referring to English the study shows that the terms for the face in both languages have developed figurative meanings along similar routes with similar stops. It also shows that the concepts of “face and facework”, admittedly ubiquitous in all cultures, are manifested more richly in Chinese than in English — a reflection of cultural differences in values attached to those concepts. Finally, a hypothetical “Triangle Model” is proposed to account for the relationship between language, culture, body, and cognition.
2016. A Benchmark for Politeness. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 4], ► pp. 397 ff.
Baranyiné Kóczy, Judit
2023. Cultural Models of the Body Parts Hand and Hair in Hungarian Archaic Prayers. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 15:2 ► pp. 135 ff.
2022. ‘Face’-related expressions in the Minnan Dialect of Chinese. Language Sciences 94 ► pp. 101510 ff.
Dourado, Suzana de Magalhães & Ceci Vilar Noronha
2014. A face marcada: as múltiplas implicações da vitimização feminina nas relações amorosas. Physis: Revista de Saúde Coletiva 24:2 ► pp. 623 ff.
Dowker, Ann
2003. Young children's and adults' use of figurative language: how important are cultural and linguistic influences?. In Polysemy, ► pp. 317 ff.
Drury, Vicki, Peggy Pei-Chia Chiang, Philip Esterhuizen, Dawn Freshwater & Beverley Taylor
2014. Researchers’ experiences of focus group dynamics in Singapore, Australia and the Netherlands: troubling multicultural assumptions. Journal of Research in Nursing 19:6 ► pp. 460 ff.
2018. Violência física contra lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, travestis e transexuais no interior do nordeste brasileiro. Revista de Salud Pública 20:4 ► pp. 445 ff.
Forceville, Charles
2005. Visual representations of the idealized cognitive model of anger in the Asterix album La Zizanie. Journal of Pragmatics 37:1 ► pp. 69 ff.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar & Maria Sifianou
2017. (Im)politeness and Identity. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 227 ff.
2022. Cultural Conceptualisations of TREE: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Hungarian and Russian Folksongs. In Concepts, Discourses, and Translations [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 21 ff.
He, Lin, Rong Chen & Ming Dong
2023. Humorous mockery: How to amuse and be polite at the same time. Journal of Pragmatics 211 ► pp. 31 ff.
Held, Gudrun
2024. The Italian Bella Figura – a challenge for politeness theories. Journal of Politeness Research 20:1 ► pp. 39 ff.
Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo
2008. Much mouth much tongue: Chinese metonymies and metaphors of verbal behaviour. Cognitive Linguistics 19:2
Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona
2014. Semantic extensions of body part terms: common patterns and their interpretation. Language Sciences 44 ► pp. 15 ff.
2017. Face and (Im)politeness. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 89 ff.
Pan, Yue, Pengyuan Liu & Qi Su
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.
2010. Face as an indexical category in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 42:8 ► pp. 2131 ff.
Ruhi, Şükriye & Hale Işık-Güler
2007. Conceptualizing face and relational work in (im)politeness: Revelations from politeness lexemes and idioms in Turkish. Journal of Pragmatics 39:4 ► pp. 681 ff.
Sifianou, Maria & Angeliki Tzanne
2021. Face, Facework and Face-Threatening Acts. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 249 ff.
Tang, Chris
2014. Cultural conceptualisations and language. Theoretical framework and applications. Journal of Pragmatics 66 ► pp. 32 ff.
Tickle-Degnen, Linda, Leslie A. Zebrowitz & Hui-ing Ma
2011. Culture, gender and health care stigma: Practitioners’ response to facial masking experienced by people with Parkinson’s disease. Social Science & Medicine 73:1 ► pp. 95 ff.
Vu, Nguyen Hoang, Nguyen Minh Trieu, Ho Nguyen Anh Tuan, Tran Dang Khoa & Nguyen Truong Thinh
2022. Review: Facial Anthropometric, Landmark Extraction, and Nasal Reconstruction Technology. Applied Sciences 12:19 ► pp. 9548 ff.
NING YU
2003. Synesthetic metaphor: A cognitive perspective. jlse 32:1 ► pp. 19 ff.
Yu, Ning
2003. Metaphor, Body, and Culture: The Chinese Understanding of Gallbladder and Courage. Metaphor and Symbol 18:1 ► pp. 13 ff.
Ning Yu
2003. Chinese metaphors of thinking. cogl 14:2-3 ► pp. 141 ff.
Yu, Ning
2004. The eyes for sight and mind. Journal of Pragmatics 36:4 ► pp. 663 ff.
Yu, Ning
2008. Metaphor from Body and Culture. In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ► pp. 247 ff.
2017. How face as a system of value-constructs operates through the interplay of mianzi and lian in Chinese: a corpus-based study. Language Sciences 64 ► pp. 152 ff.
[no author supplied]
2003. References. In The Ethnography of Communication, ► pp. 285 ff.
[no author supplied]
2009. Backmatter. In The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective, ► pp. 388 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff.
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