A Cultural Cognitive Study Of Qi Metaphors And Metonymies In Chinese

The Chinese “qi”,a key cultural element,has also been named “qi of the Five Elements” including metal,wood,water,fire,and earth in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM).As an essential concept in Chinese philosophy,qi embodies the worldview and cosmology Chinese people bear.It is observed that Chinese people have never ceased to explore qi from ancient time to the present,and this generates a series of fruitful research.Previous studies of qi were made from a variety of perspectives comprising nonlinguistic studies and linguistic studies of qi.Non-linguistic studies of qi mainly include studies of qi in philosophy,TCM,and aesthetics.Linguistic studies of qi are generally from two perspectives,namely,semantic studies of qi and metaphorical studies of qi.Specifically,the former focused on the study of its meaning extension,and classifications of its meaning whereas the latter centered on both the identification of qi metaphors and the explanation of underlying meanings in them.Although preceding studies have made fruitful explorations regarding qi from the above two perspectives,relatively a few studies have set foot in the conceptual metonymy of qi and let alone combined studies of qi metaphors and metonymies.Added that many previous studies investigated culture and cognition separately instead of perceiving the two as a whole.Theories from Cultural Linguistics proposed by Farzad Sharifian have provided a new perspective to study cultural cognition by integrating language,culture,and cognition organically.Therefore,the current study applies the theoretical and analytical framework of Cultural Linguistics by Farzad Sharifian and the Conceptual Metaphor/Metonymy Theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson to explore qi in order to cope with the two research questions:(1)What are the metaphorical and metonymic meanings of qi in Chinese based on the Conceptual Metaphor/Metonymy theory?(2)What are the cultural cognitive bases for the metaphorical and metonymic meanings of qi in Chinese?With qualitative method and quantitative method,specifically description and explanation,and corpus-based method,the thesis attempts to respond to the two questions by analyzing the 2000 items of qi randomly extracted from the Corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics PKU(CCL).The major findings are as follows:First,for metaphorical meanings and metonymic meanings of qi in Chinese,they are classified into eight metaphorical categories and three major metonymic categories,respectively.Based on the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit(MIPVU),eight types of metaphors of qi can be divided into ENERGY IS QI,APPEARANCE IS QI,FAME IS QI,PERSONALITY IS QI,EMOTION IS QI,ILLNESS IS QI,FATE IS QI,as well as LIFE IS QI where the eight types are used to describe the energy,appearances,fame,personalities,emotions,illnesses of human beings by the cross-domain mapping from the domain of qi to the target domain.The three major categories of metonymies regarding qi are QI OF NATURE STANDS FOR QI OF HUMAN,QI OF NATURE STANDS FOR QI OF SOCIETY,and QI OF HUMAN STANDS FOR QI OF TEXT/CALLIGRAPH.These metonymies embody the meaning of characteristics in human,society,and text/calligraphy.Meanwhile,four sub-categories are included in the first category,viz.EXISTENCE OF QI FOR EXISTENCE OF LIFE,FEATURES OF QI FOR HUMAN PERSONALITY,QI STANDS FOR HUMAN ATTITUDE,and QI STANDS FOR FATE.Second,the cultural cognitive bases are reflected in three respects:(1)the Five Elements are the subcategories of qi,playing a pivotal role in the formation of metaphorical and metonymic meanings of qi in Chinese;(2)the cultural schemas of qi in Chinese are in the belief of harmony between heaven and human,and of the Dao in Chinese philosophy that are deeply entrenched in the cognition of Chinese people;(3)the cultural metaphors and cultural metonymies of qi,are also motivated by two cultural factors.One is the profound study of Chinese qi astrology,and the other is a Chinese worldview of getting inspirations and quoting biological and universal signs from observing human bodies and the universe.The present study on qi is of significance,both theoretically and practically.Theoretically,it enriches the cultural cognitive study of language,culture,and cognition by integrating the Conceptual Metaphor/Metonymy theory and theory of Cultural Linguistics.Practically,relatively comprehensively analysis of qi in Chinese contributes to spreading Chinese culture and presenting compelling China stories,which will shed some light on cross-cultural communication,and give some implications to Chinese English studies,translation studies of qi,language teaching of Chinese as a second language as well.