Conceptual Metaphors Of Anger/nu In English And Chinese:A Corpus-based Study

Anger(怒 nu in Chinese)is one of the most dangerous emotions in all humans throughout life(Ekman & Friesen 2003).It has long been a hot research topic across a wide range of academic disciplines.In the study of conceptual metaphors of anger/nu,a lot of constructive work has been done by researchers,among whom K?vecses(2000b,2010,2020)and Yu(1998)are the leading figures who have made systematic studies of the conceptual metaphors of anger/nu(together with some other emotions)and claimed that ANGER IS HEAT is the central conceptual metaphor of anger/nu in both English and Chinese.Following them,a number of Chinese scholars such as Lin(1998),Wu et al.(2016),etc.examined the conceptual metaphor categories of anger(among other emotions)identified by such researchers as Lakoff & K?vecses(1987),K?vecses(2000b,2010)and found a number of conceptual metaphors of nu specific to Chinese.Previous attempts to categorize anger/nu metaphors have provided significant insights into our present research,but little attention has been paid to the systematic study,with the use of large corpus data,of the collostructions of the English word “anger”together with its derivational and inflectional forms or the Chinese character “nu” and the hierarchical structures of the metaphors of anger/nu activated by these collostructions.To address these limitations,this dissertation has firstly examined with large size corpus data the English word “anger” together with its derivational and inflectional forms and the Chinese character “nu” and their constructions in the contexts.Then the conceptual metaphors of ANGER realized by these constructions have been further studied fromthe more concrete “mental space” and “frame” levels so as to get a systematic and an objective overview of the conceptual structures of ANGER and to disclose the cognitive motivations for its metaphorical conceptualization.This dissertation has answered the following three research questions:1.What construction types of anger/nu can be identified from English and Chinese corpora?2.What conceptual metaphors are activated from the constructions of anger/nu in English and Chinese?3.What are the cognitive motivations for metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu in English and Chinese?To address the above questions,this study has focused on the conceptual structures of ANGER activated by the “mental space” level lexemes collocated with the English word “anger” together with its derivational and inflectional forms and the Chinese character “nu” in real life contexts within the framework of the “Multi-level View of Conceptual Metaphor” proposed by K?vecses(2017).Two online big size corpora were employed to collect linguistic data: COCA(Corpus of Contemporary American English)in English,and BCC(BLCU Corpus Center)in Chinese.The linguistic data trawled from these 2 corpora are based on two searching units: the English word “anger” together with its derivational and inflectional forms and the Chinese character “ 怒 ”.Altogether 3834 cases of metaphorical expressions of anger and 846 cases of metaphorical expressions of nu were trawled from the corpora.These extracted cases of metaphorical expressions of anger and nu were downloaded and re-concordanced with the data analysis tool Antconc 3.5.0.The aim of re-concordancing these downloaded data is to find out the constructions of anger/nu and the collocated lexemes in each construction which are used to metaphorically realize anger/nu.Collostructional Analysis 3.5 proposed by Gries(2014)were applied to analyze the collostructional strengths of the collexemes that fall into the specified slot of the construction to determine the major conceptual metaphor categories of anger/nu activated by each construction.Then,the conceptual metaphors activated by the constructions of anger/nu were categorized.At this stage,the syntagmatic relations of the collocated words and expressions with “anger” and its derivational and inflectional forms and “nu” in each metaphor category were studied at the“mental space” level to figure out their conceptual structures at the“frame” and “domain” levels.Finally,the cognitive motivations for metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu in English and Chinese were probed into.Three major findings have been identified out of the corpus-based study of the conceptual metaphors of anger/nu:Firstly,the metaphorical expressions of “anger” and its derivational and inflectional forms and “nu” trawled from the corpora can be categorized into four of the construction types discussed by Sullivan(2013)in her study of the frames and constructions in metaphoric language: Domain Construction,Predicating Modifier Construction,Argument Structure Construction,and Preposition Construction.Diverse“frame” level conceptual structures have been identified within the same domain of anger/nu by examining the syntagmatic relations of the words collocated with “anger” or “nu” in the constructions.Analysis of the syntagmatic relations of the collocated words with anger/nu in these constructions can well activate the commonalities and subtle differences at the “domain” and “frame” levels,and these features are not likely to be found by the previous paradigmatic studies of anger/nu.On the one hand,the “domain” level conceptual knowledge may be diversely activated by the same construction.On the other hand,constructional analysis of thesyntagmatic relations of the words and expressions can help find what frames are profiled within the same source domain of anger/nu.Take the POSSESSION domain as an example,which is realized by the construction [sb’s+anger/nu],the major frame profiled within this domain in Chinese is A MELODY,while in English the major frame profiled is A POSSESSED LIQUID.Secondly,more conceptual metaphor types are revealed by “anger”and its constructions in the English corpus than by “nu” in the Chinese corpus,while the central metaphor of anger/nu in both languages has been revealed by corpus data as ANGER IS A SUBSTANCE rather than ANGER IS HEAT.In the English corpus 15 metaphor types of anger are activated by the 4 major constructions,and in Chinese 9 metaphor types are activated and they are all shared by their English counterparts.From the number of cases of anger/nu evoking each metaphor category,the metaphor ANGER IS A SUBSTANCE is activated much more frequently than the other metaphor categories in both languages.Altogether 71.28%of all the cases of the metaphorical expressions of nu are realized as A SUBSTANCE.In English this metaphorical concept accounts for only47.60%.When anger/nu is conceptualized as A SUBSTANCE,the following substances are profiled in both languages: FIRE,LIQUID,UNSPECIFIED SUBSTANCE;besides,QI is profiled at the same time in Chinese.But no matter what substance is activated in both languages,only a small number of cases reveal the HEAT nature of the substance.In the English corpus 75 cases(58 cases evoking FIRE,and 17 cases evoking HOT FLUIDS)show the HEAT nature of the substance,and in Chinese 71 cases realize the FLAMMABLE or EXPLOSIVE nature of fire.The majority of the cases in this generic metaphor do not provide any evidence that the substance is related to heat.Consequently,thecentral conceptual metaphor for anger/nu in both English and Chinese is ANGER IS A SUBSTANCE rather than ANGER IS HEAT.This finding makes a difference with the previously generally held claim by scholars that the central metaphor of anger/nu is ANGER IS HEAT(Cao 2011;Lakoff and K?vecses(1987);Lin 1998;Qu 2008;Peng & Bai 2007;Sun2011;Sun & Chen 2008;Wu et al.2016;Yu 1998;Zhang 2000).Furthermore,the major “frame” level conceptual structure activated by the collexemes in this central metaphor is different.In Chinese,it is AN ESSENTIAL SUBSTANCE IN THE BODY(QI and HUO regarded by ancient Chinese philosophers)that is activated the most,while in English it is AN UNSPECIFIED SUBSTANCE.Thirdly,both physical embodiment and cultural factors motivate metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu,but cultural factors exert more influences than physical effects at the more concrete “frame” level.At the “domain” level,both English and Chinese tend to conceptualize anger/nu as a substance or a container,etc.which may result from the physiological effects of anger/nu on human body.Consequently,they both apply extensively body parts as bearers of anger/nu,which may indicate that both languages accept the general metonymic principle in metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu: PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF ANGER STAND FOR ANGER.But we Chinese people tend to use a cavity in the body,especially that of the heart to harmonize their nu,while English people tend to use the feelings of physical annoyance,physical pain in particular,throughout the body to show their anger,and there are more body parts applied in English than in Chinese to metaphorically conceptualize anger/nu.At the “frame” level,both English and Chinese show specific cultural factors which motivate the formation of the conceptual structures of ANGER at this level.In English,besides the “Humoral Doctrine” thatis the most frequently cited cultural model proposed by some previous studies,this study has found that the western philosophical thoughts on fire,British ancestors’ “War Worship” and “Commercialism”,etc.also influence western people’s metaphorical conceptualization of anger.But there isn’t a cultural model that dominates the conceptualization of anger.In Chinese,the cultural models include “yin-yang”,“wuxing”,“Traditional Chinese Medicine”(TCM),and “he”(harmonization),etc.,which can be generalized as one unified model: “qi Monism”.According to Chinese na?ve materialistic philosophers,qi is the essence of the universe.This thought has exerted profound influences on every aspect of Chinese people’s life including their conceptualization of emotions.The fact that nu in Chinese is largely conceptualized as the essential substance qi in the body may explain the fact that in Shuo Wen Jie Zi all the Chinese characters meaning nu are defined in terms of the increasing and stagnation of qi in the body(Lin 2004).Compared with the previous studies of the conceptual metaphors of anger/nu in English and Chinese,this dissertation has made the following major theoretical and practical contributions:Theoretically,this study confirms K?vecses’ s(2017)proposal on the“Multi-level View of Conceptual Metaphor” for this study reveals that the conceptual structures of anger/nu are hierarchical and dynamic rather than one-dimensional or static in real life contexts.Within the framework of the “Multi-level View of Conceptual Metaphor”,the subtle features at the more concrete “mental space” and “frame” levels can be revealed by analyzing the syntagmatic relations of the words and expressions collocated with anger/nu in the constructions.The research results show that this approach can solve the disputes of the previous studies over the similarities and differences at the “domain” level conceptual structures of the shared conceptual metaphors of anger/nu in English and Chinese.In practice,this study provides an effective way to integrate the corpus methods with cognitive linguistic theories,by which the research scope of cognitive linguistics has been expanded by corpus methods.The constructions of a metaphoric concept and the hierarchical structures of this metaphoric concept can be analyzed quantitatively with corpus analysis tools out of the collocated words and expressions in the constructions.The findings are more comprehensive and reliable because they are based on observation of large size corpus data.In addition,this study gives detailed explanations to cognitive motivations for metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu in English and Chinese.Based on corpus data,this study proposes that cultural motivations exert more influences than physiological effects on metaphorical conceptualization of anger/nu,which provides valuable reference points for future studies of this subject.