Cover not available

Article published In: Visual Metaphors
Edited by Réka Benczes and Veronika Szelid
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:1] 2020
► pp. 254–274

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required
Applications of visual and linguistic metaphor

Viewpoint and metaphor in culture

A Cognitive Linguistic analysis on a selection of Chinese eulogistic idioms used in Taiwan

 | Masaryk University
Published online: 19 August 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00056.lu
Abstract
The paper presents an in-depth analysis of the language of death in Chinese and discusses the relation between language and occupation as a social factor in analyzing the language of death. In this paper, I address in what specific ways Cognitive Linguistics may serve as a useful analytical framework in studying Chinese idioms used in funerals, in an attempt to uncover cultural elements and viewpoint structure in communicating death. The study introduces basic constructs in Cognitive Linguistics which could be used for such an analysis, and applies this CL machinery to analyzing three selected groups of four-character eulogistic idioms used at funerals in Taiwan. The analysis shows that, in addition to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which has been considered the classic CL tool for studying abstract concepts like death, the subjectivity/objectivity distinction in Cognitive Grammar may also be employed as a complementary and useful theoretical construct in studying the language of death, as it helps identify the special characteristics of the eulogistic idioms for teachers as a special profession in the Chinese culture.
Article outline
  • 1.Language of death as a cultural product
  • 2.Metaphor and viewpoint in discourse
  • 3.Previous studies of the cultural conceptualization of death and Chinese funeral discourse
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Mandarin eulogistic idioms for teachers, media workers and legal experts
    • 5.1Ritual idioms used in funerals of teachers (師長喪）
    • 5.2Ritual idioms used in funerals of media workers (媒體喪）
    • 5.3Ritual idioms used in funerals of legal experts (法界喪）
  • 6.When the mourner becomes the object of conceptualization
  • 7.Culture in discourse and vice versa: What Cognitive Linguistics can reveal about occupations in society
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (38)
References
Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barlow, M., & Kemmer, S. (Eds.). (2000). Usage-based models of language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benczes, R., & Burridge, K. (2018). Speaking of disease and death. In Keith Allan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of taboo words and language (pp. 61–76). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Capone, A. (2010). On pragmemes again. Dealing with death. La linguistique, 461, 3–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K., & Bowring, M. (1997). Working with texts: A core book for language analysis. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo-Fernández, E. (2006). The language of death: Euphemism and conceptual metaphorization in Victorian obituaries. SKY Journal of Linguistics, 191, 101–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo Fernández, E. (2011). Euphemistic conceptual metaphors in epitaphs from Highgate Cemetery. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 9(1), 198–225. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo-Fernández, Eliecer. (2013). Euphemistic metaphors in English and Spanish epitaphs: A comparative study. Atlantis, 35(2), 99–118.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, B., Lu, W., & Verhagen, A. (Eds.). (2016). Viewpoint and the fabric of meaning: Form and use of viewpoint tools across languages and modalities. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gee, J. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flores Moreno, C. (1999). Time, life and death in Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnets’: The Lakoffian approach to poetic metaphors. RESLA: Revista Española de LingüísticaAplicada, 131, 287–304.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, M. (1985). An introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Havlíčková Kysová, Šárka. (2016). Stage Metaphors in Verdi’s Otello: Miloš Wasserbauer’s State Theatre Production (Brno 1967) in the Context of Otello’s Staging Tradition. Theatralia 19(2), 29–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lai, V. T. & Boroditsky, L. (2013). The immediate and chronic influence of spatio-temporal metaphors on the mental representations of time in English, Mandarin, and Mandarin-English speakers. Frontiers in Psychology, 41, 142.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, W. Ronald. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (Vol. I). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lu, L. W. (2008). From textual prompts to cognitive models: A context-oriented perspective on metaphor interpretation in Taiwanese presidential speeches. Language and Linguistics, 9 (2), 341–358.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lu, W. (2017a). Socio-cultural factors in analyzing the pragmeme of accommodation: A case study of the official online eulogy request system in Taiwan. In Vahid Parvaresh & Alessandro Capone (Eds.), The Pragmeme of accommodation and intercultural pragmatics: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 111–127). Zurich: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017b). Religion and worldview in metaphor use: Cultural conceptualisations of death in Taiwanese Buddhist and Christian eulogistic idioms. In Farzad Sharifian (Ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics (pp. 49–64). Singapore: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017c). Metaphor, conceptual archetypes and subjectification: The case of COMPLETION IS UP and the polysemy of shàng in Chinese. In Angeliki Athanasiadou (Ed.), Studies in figurative thought and language (pp. 231–249). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2020). Cultural “signs of life” in politics: A case study of eulogistic idioms for Taiwanese politicians. In V. D. Sinha, A. Moreno-Núñez and Z. Tian (Eds.), Signs of life: Changes and continuity in language, thought and identity, (pp. 141–156). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lu, L. W. & K. Ahrens. (2008). Ideological influence on BUILDING metaphors in Taiwanese presidential speeches. Discourse and Society, 19 (3), 383–408. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lu, L. W., & Chiang, W. (2007). EMPTINESS WE LIVE BY: Metaphors and paradoxes in Buddhism’s Heart Sutra. Metaphor and Symbol, 22 (4), 331–355. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marin-Arrese, J. (1996). To die, to sleep: A contrastive study of metaphors for death and dying in English and Spanish. Language Sciences, 18(1–2), 37–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Migut, P. (2016). When ‘she’ comes knocking: A cognitive analysis of metaphorical terms linked with death in English and Polish obituaries. PhD diss., University of Rzeszów, Rzeszów, Poland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özcaliskan, S. (2003). In a caravanserai with two doors I am walking day and night: Metaphors of death and life in Turkish. Cognitive Linguistics, 14 (1), 281–320.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pelclová, J. & Wei-lun Lu. (2018). Persuasion across times, domains and modalities: Theoretical considerations and emerging themes. In Jana Pelclová & Wei-lun Lu (Eds.), Persuasion in public discourse: Functional and cognitive Perspectives (pp. 1–18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tien, A. (2016). What does it mean to “Commemorate”? Linguistic and cultural evidence from Chinese. The Irish Journal of Asian Studies, 21, 1–11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). To be headed for the West, riding a crane: Chinese pragmemes in the wake of someone’s passing. In A. Capone & V. Parvaresh (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation and intercultural pragmatics: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 183–202). New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tseng, M. (2017). Toward a pragmatic study of funeral discourses in Taiwan: Voice, shared situation knowledge, and metaphor. In A. Capone & V. Parvaresh (Eds.), The pragmeme of accommodation and intercultural pragmatics: The case of interaction around the event of death (pp. 259–276). New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verhagen, A. (2007). Constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Metaphorical character of moral cognition: A comparative and decompositional analysis. Metaphor and Symbol, 30 (3), 163–183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Spatial metaphors for morality: A perspective from Chinese. Metaphor and Symbol, 31(2), 108–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Lai, Yun-Sxin & Ying-Ying Tan
2025. Ethnic differences in the comprehension of Singlish metaphors. Ampersand 15 ► pp. 100244 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Chuanhong & Xu Wen
2024. Metaphorical richness. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 11:2 ► pp. 334 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Yi-Zhong & Te-Hsin Liu
2024. Metaphorical Mapping and Cultural Significance in Chinese Death-Related Idiomatic Expressions. Metaphor and Symbol 39:3 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Wolf, Hans-Georg & Frank Polzenhagen
2024. Cultural Linguistics: Some Disciplinary and Terminological Considerations. In The Handbook of Cultural Linguistics [Springer Handbooks in Languages and Linguistics, ], ► pp. 109 ff. DOI logo
Wolf, Hans-Georg & Frank Polzenhagen
2025. Cultural Metaphor. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue