Heart & face : semantics of Chinese emotion concepts

Abstract

Using the framework of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory, the thesis explores the conceptual organization of a subset of the emotion vocabulary of Modern Standard Chinese. The study consists of seven chapters. Chapter One (Introduction) provides background information on the analytic perspective adopted in the thesis, the sources of data, and a preliminary discussion of some of the issues in the early Chinese ethnotheory of "emotion". Chapter Two explicates the key concept of xin ('heart/mind'), the cognitive, moral, and emotional 'centre' of a person. Chapter Three discusses two related notions, mianzi and lian ('face'), which speak to the culturally perceived relevance of other people's judgements to the self. Chapter Four develops this theme further, dealing with the 'social feelings', i.e., reactions to the things people say and think about us. Chapter Five focuses on the semantic field of the 'anger'-like expressions. Chapter Six analyzes the lexical data pertinent to the conceptualization of different kinds of subjectively 'bad' feelings', whereas Chapter Seven discusses the emotional reactions to various types of good situations and events. Wherever possible, the thesis seeks to probe into the culturally-based aspects of the conceptual structure of emotion words, by drawing on a variety of anthropological, psychological, and sociological studies of the Chinese society. On the methodological level, the thesis attempts to demonstrate that the bias inherent in conducting the cultural analysis with the complex, language-specific notions (e.g., 'anger', 'shame', 'happiness'), can be subverted through a recourse to the universally shared simple meanings, such as, e.g., 'I', 'think', 'feel', 'because', 'good', and 'bad'.