Acknowledgments

This book is based on the dissertation I completed at the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, China. I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to all the individuals and institutions that have made this book possible.

First and foremost, I am most indebted to my responsible, respectable and resourceful supervisors Ma Bosen 马博森 and Esther Pascual for their unfailing support, constant encouragement and effective supervision. They lavished their time and insights on major and minor points of my dissertation and their influence can be found on every page of this book.

I owe my deepest gratitude to Alan Cienki and Mark Turner for hosting my research stay during the 2014–2015 academic year at the Department of Language and Communication, VU University Amsterdam and the Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University. Alan and Mark are amazingly kind, easy-going, good at listening, and quick-minded. Their pertinent guidance and invaluable feedback helped shape the contents of this book.

I am deeply obliged to Liu Haitao 刘海涛, Line Brandt, Vera Tobin, Gisela Redeker, Barbara Dancygier, Anna Bonifazi, Ronald Langacker, Zhang Ren 张韧, Yao Linshuang 姚霖霜, and especially Alan Cienki, Todd Oakley and Sergeiy Sandler for their comments on earlier versions of this book in various forms.

My sincere thanks are due to Isja Conen, the acquisition editor of John Benjamins, and the series editors Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston for their interest in and support for the book project from the very beginning, and to the anonymous reviewer for insightful suggestions for improvement. The revision of the book manuscript was carried out during my research stay from February 2022 through January 2023 in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing section, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I thank my faculty host Edward Schiappa for his constructive commentary.

Some chapters in this book are based on previous work with me as the sole or first author in Cognitive Linguistics, Pragmatics, and Journal of Historical Pragmatics, as well as in collective volumes published by John Benjamins. I thank my co-authors, the respective editors, and the publishers (John Benjamins and Mouton De Gruyter) for their kind permission to reprint portions of the papers here.

I am grateful to the financial support from the Jiangsu University Philosophy and Social Science Fund (2021SJZDA089), the Jiangsu Social Science Fund (21YYB012), China Scholarship Council (202108320170) as well as a key discipline project of Jiangsu Province during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unconditional love and constant care. My wife, Guo Yi 郭夷, takes most of the responsibility of taking care of our most adorable daughter Xiang Yihan 项仪含 so that I can focus on writing this book. Her companionship and support have been invaluable. My parents, Xiang Ruiwen 项瑞文 and Liu Huilan 刘会兰, as well as my younger sister Xiang Mingcui 项名翠, understand the importance of my work, support every decision I make, and tolerate my long absence in family life. This book is dedicated to them.