A Study Of The Semantic Scope Of The Concept Of Shame:the Lexicon Of Shame

This paper is a study of the concept of shame from the perspective of linguistic analysis. Studying words enables us to more profoundly understand the various phenomena in our lives, which such words describe. We must first grasp the original meaning of the Chinese character for "shame" or "xiu(羞)”by tracing the development and evolution of its meaning throughout the history of Chinese civilization in order to precisely understand its modern meaning. The exceedingly long duration of the history of Chinese characters, the richness of research on Chinese characters, and the diversity of contrasting opinions upon them in the history of scholarship put a student attempting to dissect such a character as xiu in a difficult position. In this position, we have employed analytical, comparative and descriptive means in order to explain our understanding of the meaning of xiu.Some concept of shame can be found in almost every ethnic group and language. Shame is one of the fundamental emotions, which all humans experience; the concept of "shame" belongs to the set of concepts, which describe fundamental moods such as happiness, anger, love, hate, and so on. It seems that the Chinese character "xiu" is originally unrelated to the modern words it is confused with today-words like embarrassment (xiukui), shyness, shame and the like. Xiu originally meant "to make an offering" and "to taste delicious." The latter two meanings of this character, however, have disappeared due to the vicissitudes of Chinese society; the only meaning, which remains for us today is xiukui-"to be ashamed or embarrassed." What connection could there be between the latter and the offering of delicious food? This paper presents the results of our research of this question.Most linguistic research of the modern epoch have defined the transformation of the meaning of "xiu" in the following ways:xiu gained the new meaning of "humiliation" because it contains the radical that stands for "ugliness." Moreover, due to a complex of cultural reasons, xiu has been associated with sacrificial offerings and rituals, and by extension-shame. We have formed our own perspective on xiu out of the relevant articles and literature we have found on the subject.Every civilization has encountered the phenomenon of shame or xiu. In this paper, we compare xiu to similar concepts in European civilization, and find that "shame" and "xiu" share many aspects in common without ceasing to be distinct on a variety of levels. Commonalities appear in etymological origins. Analyzing from the ethical perspective, we see that the concept of shame in western civilization differs from that of the Chinese in terms of education, upbringing, and morality. Through comparative analysis, we dissect the various levels of dissimilarities and accords between shame and xiu.The more people come to know about the emotional relationship between the outer world and themselves, the richer the vocabulary associated with the character xiu will be. At the end of the paper, we present the results of our analysis of the various associated usages of xiu throughout ancient and modern Chinese.In summary, in this paper we attempt to complete a systematic analysis and interpretation of the concept of xiu and its idiomatic usages. We hope this paper contributes in some way to the reader’s understanding and knowledge of the concepts of xiu and shame and the cultures in which these distinct concepts emerged and developed.