Mental Blending Of The Emotion Metaphors In The Medical Classic Of Huangdi Neijing

Conceptual metaphor in traditional Chinese medical works has been a hot topic of cognitive linguistic study,which has brought about some achievements in recent years.The current findings concentrate mainly on the linguistic explanation of the works from a cognitive linguistic perspective.However,few of present researches have studied emotion metaphors in traditional Chinese medical works.From a perspective of cognitive linguistics,with the methods of speculation,contrastive analysis,description and exemplification,this dissertation is aimed at revealing the cognitive manners of emotion metaphors in the classical Chinese medical text,Huangdi Neijing,and to trace the development of human emotion language cognition so as to shed light on some unknown phenomena of the genesis and evolution of human language.Xi and Bei,the two typical extreme emotions among the seven sorts of core emotion concepts in Huangdi Neijing,are studied in an attempt to answer the following three questions:1.How do we construe the concepts of Xi and Bei emotions and what are their language representations?2.What are the embodied motivations of Xi and Bei emotion metaphors?3.How do we construe the meaning construction of Xi and Bei emotion metaphors?Within the framework of mental blending,this dissertation systematically analyzes the Xi and Bei emotion metaphors in Huangdi Neijing and the findings are as follows:Firstly,Xi and Bei are two prime inborn feelings,the expression of which takes resort to metaphors,hence derivative conceptions,that is,what is referred to in this paper as conceptualization of emotion metaphors.The language representation takes vehicle as its signifier or sound image in Saussurean terms while tenor,for example ―gao‖(hing)and ―xing‖(rise)are vehicles to represent ―xi‖,hence the conceptualization of ―gaoxing‖,with the semantic value of ―happiness‖,hence the entrenched concept of ―gaoxing‖.Through analysis of the conceptualizations of Xi and Bei emotions as well as their linguistic forms,it is found that there are some divergences between the conceptualization of Xi emotion in Huangdi Neijing and that discovered in the field of cognitive linguistics.Xi emotion embodies ten types of conceptualizations in Huangdi Neijing,seven of which are similar to the corresponding conceptualizations in terms of cognitive linguistics while two of them are unique in Chinese,namely,1)XI IS AN INCLINATION OR OFTEN OR MORE,2)XI IS A NATURAL FORCE OR PATHOGENIC FACTOR,whereas the seven types of conceptualizations of Bei emotion are similar to those in terms of cognitive linguistics,though there are fewer in conceptualization types.Conceptualizations of Xi and Bei emotions in specific context cannot be differentiated into types or identified in detail due to Chinese parataxis,with its emphasis on meaning rather than structure.Lastly,cognitive manners of human beings are almost close in Xi and Bei metaphors while some differences lie in cognitive manners of Xi metaphors,for example,between past and present,East and West.Secondly,The Xi and Bei emotion metaphors in Huangdi Neijing are based on human embodied experience,involving neurological and psychological mechanisms as well as sociocultural aspects.Akin to the comprehension of other metaphors,the emotions of Xi and Bei metaphors are motivated by embodied neurolinguitic,psycholinguisic,and cognitive linguistic experiences.Iconicity is understood through human experiences,and emotion metaphors are understood and construed via embodied resemblances between different entities.Thirdly,the meaning construction of Xi and Bei emotion metaphors is similar in human cognition.The differences lie in contextual factors and linguistic representations.So some differences appear.After a systematic analysis of the Xi and Bei emotion metaphors in Huangdi Neijing,this dissertation has the following findings.First,online meaning construction largely relies on context and background knowledge involved in online meaning construction,as largely determines the comprehension of discourse.Second,when constructing metaphorical meaning online,individuals,due to their different idiosyncratic cognitive affective styles,may retrieve certain key information which differs from others.Third,though humans are universally similar in their physiological structures,people in the past see Xi and Bei emotion metaphors in a different ways from contemporary humans.And it is inevitable for people to subjectively construct the meanings of Xi and Bei emotion metaphors according to human differences.Fourthly,with vagueness in specific context,it is difficult to delineate and define the conceptualization model for every single metaphor of Xi or Bei.In ancient times,when the language had different representations,people’s use of language and their way of thinking were not distinctive enough,and that is why different people may give different interpretations of this ancient work of Huangdi Neijing and some even mystify it.This study has both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it further testifies and supplements the existing emotion metaphor theory.Practically,from the linguistic point of view,it has been demonstrated that when we understand the ancient medical texts such as Huangdi Neijing,we should try our best to understand the true meanings of the texts from our own practical experiences.In general,the study of emotion metaphors in Huangdi Neijing,especially the analysis of the Xi and Bei emotion metaphors,is hoped to further explore human affective thinking,to broaden the cognitive linguistic studies of emotion metaphors,as well as to promote the establishment and development of emotion metaphor theory system of the Chinese language.