Browsing results for Chinese (Mandarin)
Published on May 20, 2018. Last updated on June 22, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2006). Ways of meaning, ways of life: A semantic approach to Chinese ethnopsychology. PhD thesis, Australian National University.
Open access
Abstract:
This thesis attempts to identify some key aspects of Chinese indigenous psychologies reflected in the Chinese language, and to investigate and articulate their meanings from a culture-internal perspective. An in-depth examination and analysis of key Chinese words and expressions reveal the conceptual basis of Chinese social organization and social interaction,
distinctive ways of emotion expression (both verbal and non-verbal) in relation to underlying cultural values and attitudes towards emotion, the relationship between sensory experience and the conceptual structure (especially with regard to the role of ‘taste’ in Chinese conceptual formation), as well as the folk model of learning in relation to ‘memorization’ and knowledge formation.
NSM is employed as a culture-independent conceptual tool for meaning analysis so that the ways of thinking, knowing, feeling and behaving that are fundamental to the Chinese way of life can be made easily accessible and intelligible to cultural outsiders. The cultural scripts theory, a spin-off of the NSM approach, is employed as a conceptual framework for cultural notations, aiming at a closer integration between language, culture and psychology. The study makes an empirical
and conceptual contribution not only to the growing field of the study of Chinese indigenous psychologies, but also to the study of the commonality and diversity of human experience and cognition in general. It has practical implications and applications for intercultural communication.
More information:
Chapter 2 builds on: Chinese categorization of interpersonal relationships and the cultural logic of Chinese social interaction: An indigenous perspective (2004)
Chapter 3 builds on: Why the “inscrutable” Chinese face? Emotionality and facial expression in Chinese (2006)
Rating:
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2007). Taste as a gateway to Chinese cognition. In Andrea C. Schalley, & Drew Khlentzos (Eds.), Mental states: Vol. 2. Language and cognitive structure (pp. 109-132). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.93.08ye
In the Western philosophical tradition, taste is regarded as a lower-level sense. This may explain why few linguistic studies have explored its role in human cognition. Yet, to fully understand the Chinese conceptual world, one has to understand the meanings of its rich ‘taste’-based vocabulary. This study seeks to bring this important aspect of Chinese sensory and cognitive experience to the attention of researchers of human cognition. It proposes a Chinese model of cognitive states in relation to taste, and discusses the cultural bases for the peculiarly Chinese “embodied” way of experiencing. It also discusses the physiological basis that seems to underpin the general principles of the cognitive system observed in Chinese and in some Indo-European languages.
Chinese words explicated in NSM have approximate counterparts in English nouns such as ‘taste’, ‘feeling’; in adjectives such as ‘flavourful’, ‘absorbed [in doing something]’; and in verbal phrases such as ‘enjoy in retrospect’, ‘recollect the pleasant flavour of’, ‘understand through thinking about experience’, ‘taste so as to appreciate’ and hence ‘appreciate’, ‘have good taste’.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) cháng 尝, (E) huíwèi 回味, (E) pĭnwèi 品味, (E) rùwèi 入味, (E) tĭwèi 体味, (E) zīwèi 滋味
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on January 26, 2020.
Ye, Zhengdao (2007). ‘Memorisation’, learning and cultural cognition: The notion of bèi (‘auditory memorisation’) in the written Chinese tradition. In Mengistu Amberber (Ed.), The language of memory in a crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 139-180). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/hcp.21.09ye
This study examines a cultural practice of ‘remembering’ – 背 bèi (‘auditory memorization’) that plays a prominent role in the learning experience of Chinese people. It first conducts a detailed semantic analysis of 背 bèi, using Natural Semantic Metalanguage to reveal a culture-internal view of and belief about memory formation and learning, and contrasts it with Chinese 记 jì (‘try to remember/write down’) and with memorize and learn by heart in English. It then explores linguistic, cognitive and cultural reasons that could explain such a practice. Finally, it addresses the question of why 背 bèi, which exhibits some key features of knowledge transmission in oral cultures, is so prized by the Chinese people, possessors of a long written history.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) bèi 背, (E) jì 记, (E) learn by heart, (E) memorize, (E) zì 字
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 19, 2018.
Sun, Gui-Li, & Hsieh, Ching-Yu (2008). Three emotional adverbs in Mandarin Chinese: An application of Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Feng Chia Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 17, 121-139. PDF (open access)
Emotional adverbs are usually difficult for non-native speakers to comprehend. They belong to a category of function words that are not easily defined and that appear to be semantically empty. Few researchers have explored them. This study examines the emotional adverbs 明明 mingming, 萬萬 wanwan and 簡直 jianzhi by means of the NSM approach. The data for the study was mostly selected from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese, and from conversations among junior high school students.
The result shows that each of the adverbs has different implications and can be used in certain specific situations. For example, 明明 mingming is used to express negative emotions like disaffection or anger, while 萬萬 wanwan can be used to show speakers’ positive and negative feelings, although it is used only in negative sentences. 簡直 jianzhi is usually followed by a metaphor or simile and implies a complaint and incredibility. The underlying cognition of the three emotional adverbs is revealed by an analysis of explications.
Approximate application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
Tags: (E) jianzhi 簡直, (E) joyful, (E) mingming 明明, (E) wanwan 萬萬
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Tien, Adrian (2009). Semantic prime HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese: In search of a viable exponent. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17(2), 356-382. DOI: 10.1075/p&c.17.2.07tie
HAPPEN is part of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) inventory of primes. Its most appropriate exponent in Mandarin Chinese was previously thought to be fa1sheng1. This article argues that fa1sheng1 is not the correct exponent of HAPPEN as it is marked for ‘adversity’ as well as what I call ‘serious mention’ or ‘noteworthiness’ of the event, i.e., that an event is sufficiently serious or noteworthy to fare a mention. This article puts forward you3, lit. ‘have, exist, happen’, and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4, lit. ‘like how/like this’ instead, as allolexic exponents of HAPPEN in Mandarin Chinese. Though highly polysemous each in its own way, the HAPPEN sense of you3 and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4 can, respectively, be shown to be semantically irreducible and pragmatically neutral. This article delineates some of the syntactic and contextual distributions attesting to the viability of you3 and zen3(me)yang4 / zhe4(me)yang4 as the Mandarin Chinese exponents of HAPPEN.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (T) Chinese (Mandarin)
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2010). Eating and drinking in Mandarin and Shanghainese: A lexical-conceptual analysis. In Wayne Christensen, Elizabeth Schier, & John Sutton (Eds.), ASCS09: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science (pp. 375-383). Sydney: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.5096/ASCS200957. PDF (open access)
Slightly revised as:
Ye, Zhengdao (2012). Eating and drinking in Mandarin and Shanghainese: A lexical-conceptual analysis. In Cathryn Donohue, Shunichi Ishihara, & William Steed (Eds.), Quantitative approaches to problems in linguistics: Studies in honour of Phil Rose (pp. 265-280), Munich: Lincom Europa.
There are many activities that humans cannot do without. Eating and drinking are two of them. But, do people conceptualize these ‘basic’ human activities in the same way? This paper provides a Chinese perspective from two varieties of Sinitic languages – Mandarin Chinese and Shanghai Wu, which is spoken in the Shanghai metropolitan area by approximately 14 million native speakers. Both of these forms of Chinese suggest two different ways of conceptualization. In Mandarin Chinese, a lexical distinction is made between 吃 chī and 喝 hē, comparable to eat and drink in English (but not exactly the same); whereas in Shanghai Wu one single lexical item čhyq is used to describe any activity involving ingestion. The paper conducts a detailed contrastive semantic analysis of these concepts, explores the motivations behind their figurative meaning extensions, and uses the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) to articulate the conceptualizations reflected in these concepts. The findings of this paper are consistent with those emerging from crosslinguistic investigation of less familiar languages in recent times, in that there are variations in linguistic coding of eating and drinking. However, this paper also illustrates that one perhaps should not underestimate the variations of conceptualization within one ethnic group.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) chī 吃, (E) čhyq, (E) hē 喝
Published on August 16, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Kornacki, Paweł (2010). Studies in emotions: Ethnolinguistic perspectives. Warszawa: Wydział Neofilologii UW.
Based on the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, the work analyses selected aspects of conceptualization and verbal expressions of emotions in contemporary Chinese (pŭtōnghuà) and Polish. Referring to intercultural anthropological and psychological research on emotions, its chapters discuss the importance of the Chinese cultural key word “heart/mind”, the semantics of words for bad feelings in Chinese, colloquial Polish speech practice, and the main conceptual elements of Early-Chinese and Indian cultural emotion models.
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Tien, Adrian (2011). Lexical semantics of children’s Mandarin Chinese during the first four years. München: Lincom.
Revised version of the author’s PhD thesis, The semantics of children’s Mandarin Chinese: The first four years (University of New England, Armidale, 2005).
If children’s early words or word-like “phrasemes” have any meanings at all, then it should be possible to study and analyse their meanings. But how can early words and meanings be rigorously studied and analysed? In examining naturalistic production data from forty-seven subjects acquiring Mandarin during the first four years, this innovative study takes a radical, semantic approach to words and their meanings in child Mandarin through adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach.
Amongst our findings, lexical exponents of sixty-one or so semantic primes posited in NSM are present in child Mandarin before the end of the fourth year. Many of these are among the earliest and the most frequent words that children produce. In addition, combinatorial properties of these lexical exponents also support hypotheses advanced about universal syntax within the NSM framework, despite challenges posed by a few exponents.
Early vocabulary comprises a great many semantically complex, i.e. “non-prime”, words. Before an NSM prime acquires a lexical exponent, it may first be conceptually present as core semantic elements in the meanings of common non-prime words. This phenomenon is termed “latency”: a semantic prime is considered “latent” when it is first represented conceptually and expounded lexically only later in development.
On the whole, in adopting a representational system (NSM) that is commensurable with the adult system, this study demonstrates that there is, in fact, developmental continuity between the young child’s semantic system and the adult’s system.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2013). Understanding the conceptual basis of the ‘old friend’ formula in Chinese social interaction and foreign diplomacy: A cultural script approach. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 33, 365-385. DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2013.846459
This study attempts to make sense of a Chinese diplomatic formula – calling or labelling one’s counterpart 中国人民的老朋友 zhōngguó rénmín de lăopéngyŏu (‘an old friend of the Chinese people’) – by unravelling its conceptual basis. It shows that this formula has deep roots in Chinese social practices, and that its use is governed by a web of intrinsically linked cultural scripts. The paper articulates these scripts in terms of the culture-independent Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), unveiling the cultural logic underlying the use of the expression and revealing the culturally distinctive Chinese way of categorizing and conceptualizing ‘friend’, which is different from the Anglophone way. On the one hand, the paper shows the crucial role that language plays in managing interpersonal relationships by Chinese speakers; on the other, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the conceptual foundations of Chinese diplomatic style, illustrating how formulaic language in diplomacy highlights aspects of social cognition that are fundamental to the speakers of a community, and therefore deserving more attention than has hitherto been the case.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) péngyŏu 朋友, (E) zìjĭrén 自己人, (S) insiders and outsiders, (S) labelling someone as a 同 tóng 'fellow' X, (S) labelling someone as a 老 lăo 'old/long-standing' X, (S) speaking differently to different categories of people, (S) 由疏至亲 yóushūzhìqīn ‘from being distant to being close’
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Tien, Adrian (2013). Bootstrapping and the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage perspective. In Dagmar Bittner, & Nadja Ruhlig (Eds.), Lexical bootstrapping: The role of lexis and semantics in child language development (pp. 39-72). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110308693.39
By means of a set of simple, indefinable concepts apparently existing in the heart of any language, and known as conceptual or semantic “primes”, Natural Semantic Metalanguage researchers explore certain hypotheses about the nature and identities of the innate concepts which may underpin language acquisition. Those hypotheses relate to the kind of conceptual/semantic knowledge/skill that may actually facilitate lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic acquisition, in a comparable way as conjectured by the Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis.
This chapter takes child Mandarin as the child language in question and examines evidence from naturalistic production data of ten young children acquiring Mandarin. Preliminary results indicate that the lexical exponents of all NSM primes are present in child Mandarin before the end of the fourth year. In addition, before a prime is lexically represented in production, it may first be conceptually present as core semantic elements in the meanings of common non-prime words. This phenomenon is termed “latency”. Our findings indicate that child Mandarin and adult Mandarin probably operate on lexico-semantically and lexico-syntactically commensurate systems, with the NSM accounting for their commensurability and, in turn, developmental continuity, though we have also taken various variables into consideration.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (T) English
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2013). Comparing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to emotion and the GRID paradigm. In Johnny R.J. Fontaine, Klaus R. Scherer, & Cristina Soriano (Eds.), Components of emotional meaning: A sourcebook (pp. 399-409). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592746.003.0028
Three important starting points of the GRID paradigm are that (a) the words and expressions ordinary people use to talk about their emotional experience are central to emotion research, (b) emotions are multi-componential phenomena, and (c) the study of the commonalities of human emotion should be firmly grounded in cross-cultural research. All these positions find strong resonance in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to emotion. The aim of this paper is to introduce the NSM approach, compare it with the GRID approach, and explore the possibility of a joint effort between them in the quest for a better understanding of both the universals and the culture-specific aspects of human emotions. The examples discussed in the paper are drawn from English, Chinese, and Ewe, a West African language.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2014). The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese. International Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 194-215.
DOI: 10.1075/ijolc.1.2.04ye
Abstract:
This paper undertakes detailed meaning analyses of 幸福 xìngfú, a concept central to contemporary Chinese discourse on “happiness”, and its opposite 痛苦 tòngkŭ (‘emotional anguish/suffering/pain’). Drawing data from five Chinese corpora and applying the semantic techniques developed by NSM researchers, the present study reveals a conceptualization of happiness that is markedly different from that encoded in the English concept of happiness. Particularly, the analysis shows that the Chinese conception of 幸福 xìngfú is relational in nature, being firmly anchored in interpersonal relationships. Loosely translatable as ‘a belief that one is loved and cared for’, 幸福 xìngfú reflects the Chinese idea of love, which places emphasis on actions over words and is intrinsically related to other core cultural values, such as 孝 xiào (‘filial piety’). The chapter relates semantic discussion directly to recent research on happiness and subjective well-being involving Chinese subjects, highlighting and problematizing the role of language in the emergent and fast-growing field of happiness research and stressing the important role of culture in global “happiness studies”.
More information:
Reissued as:
Ye, Zhengdao (2016). The meaning of “happiness” (xìngfú) and “emotional pain” (tòngkŭ) in Chinese. In Cliff Goddard & Zhengdao Ye (Eds.), “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures (pp. 65-86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/bct.84.04ye
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) tòngkŭ 痛苦, (E) xìngfú 幸福
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on August 18, 2018.
Ye, Zhengdao (2014). Opposites in language and thought: A Chinese perspective. In Gabriella Rundblad, Aga Tytus, Olivia Knapton, & Chris Tang (Eds.), Selected papers from the 4th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference (pp. 284-302). London: UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. PDF (open access)
There is a strong view held by many semanticists that ‘oppositeness’ is lexically embodied in every language. This suggests that antonymous thought may be an inherent feature of human cognition. However, in the available literature on the sense relations of opposites, most of the analyses in English focus on adjectives, in particular gradable adjectives. How ‘oppositeness of meaning’ is actually construed by speakers from other languages and cultures, in particular by those from non-Indo-European languages, has largely been unexplored.
This paper fills the gap by providing a Chinese language perspective. It first illustrates the critical role opposites play in the word and conceptual formation in Chinese. It then offers a fined-grained case analysis of two pairs of culturally salient complementary noun opposites designating social categories as a way of gaining insight into varied construals and conceptualizations of the nature of ‘oppositeness of meaning’.
A central methodological concern is how culturally distinctive ways of thinking about the relationships between the two members of a complementary pair can be reflected and captured. The paper proposes that the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), in particular its ‘cultural scripts’ theory branch, provides a possible solution. Related methodological issues discussed in the paper include subtypes of complementary opposites, cultural scripts vs. logical formulation, the issue of markedness, and the role of culture in the semantics of Chinese opposites.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (S) insiders and outsiders, (S) strangers and familiar people
Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 9, 2018.
Wong, Jock (2016). The pragmatics of kéyĭ (“can”) in Singapore Mandarin. In Alessandro Capone & Jacob L. Mey (Eds.), Interdisciplinary studies in pragmatics, culture and society (pp. 857-876). Cham: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-12616-6_33
This chapter deals with the pragmatics of kéyĭ, the non-Standard Singapore Mandarin equivalent of English can. It describes some of the speech acts it is associated with and represents some of the associated speech norms in the form of cultural scripts formulated in Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). It is hoped that the cultural scripts will facilitate a better understanding of the cultural values underlying the use of this word.
The chapter also contrasts some of the speech norms described in it with their English counterparts to highlight their culture-specificity. It further examines examples from standard Mandarin to explain their cultural significance. It is shown that speech acts are often culture-specific, and speech acts specific to one language (in this case, English) cannot adequately describe speech acts specific to another (in this case, Singapore Mandarin). The proposed solution is NSM, which can clearly explain Singapore Mandarin speech acts associated with the word kéyĭ and, in doing so, clarify the language-specific use of the Singapore Mandarin semantic equivalent of the English can.
A number of authentic examples are studied. They suggest that the relationship between Singapore Mandarin speakers is often marked by social obligations (among other things). These obligations have to do with priority given to what one is able to do over what one wants to do. Speakers tend to de-emphasize what one (either the speaker or someone else) wants to do and, in doing so, go against some of Grice’s maxims and Brown and Levinson’s politeness principles. Singapore Mandarin culture, which has a strong presence in Singaporean society, may thus be considered “collectivist”, which means that personal autonomy is not a high-ranking value and may not be something that people, at least among the older generations, are generally familiar with.
It is also noted that some of the Singapore Mandarin ways of speaking associated with kéyĭ have found their way into Singapore English, used also by non-Mandarin speakers, including native English speakers who have lived in Singapore for a substantial period of time. This observation seems to suggest that the speech norms in question are a Singaporean feature rather than merely a feature of Singapore Mandarin.
Explications are proposed for Singapore Mandarin phrases that can be loosely translated as ‘sorrowful’ (lit. ‘can sorrow’; kébēi), ‘lovely’ (lit. ‘can love’; kéài), ‘pitiful’ (lit. ‘can pity’; kélián), ‘suspicious’ (lit. ‘can suspect’; kéyí).
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) kéài, (E) kebei, (E) kélián, (E) kéyí, (S) “suggestion” or “advice”, (S) doing something for someone, (S) evaluation, (S) getting someone to do something, (S) interpretation of “you can do this”, (S) making an “offer”
Published on July 13, 2017. Last updated on September 10, 2018.
Shen, Rae (2017). Semantic primes and their universal syntax in Mandarin Chinese: An update. MA thesis, Australian National University.
Building on the ground-breaking work on Chinese Mandarin primes undertaken by Hilary Chappell, the current study aims to review and update the propositions on the semantic universals and their syntactic properties in Mandarin in the light of the development of the NSM framework during the past decade. It is hoped that the findings as well as the problems raised in this thesis will contribute to some newer and fuller understanding on the primes not only in the context of Mandarin but also for the NSM program.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Published on May 16, 2017. Last updated on September 2, 2019.
Ye, Zhengdao (2017). The semantics of social relation nouns in Chinese. In Zhengdao Ye (Ed.), The semantics of nouns (63-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.003.0003
Abstract:
This study investigates the nature of Chinese social grouping by analysing the meaning and conceptual structure of a set of nouns that denote salient social relations in Chinese and that form two pairs of complementary opposites. It discusses in detail the commonalities and differences underlying the construals of semantic relation within and between both pairs and offers a semantic method to represent them. The study brings to attention the social categories and associated ways of conceptualizing social and meaning relations that are not often talked about in English, and illustrates that an in-depth analysis of social relation nouns enables researchers to access non-obvious aspects of human social cognition, therefore contributing to a deeper knowledge and understanding of the priorities at play in human social categorization.
Rating:
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) (acquaintance), (E) (insiders), (E) (outsiders), (E) (stranger), (E) shēngrén 生人, (E) shúrén 熟人, (E) wàirén 外人, (E) zìjĭrén 自己人, (S) complementary relation between stranger and familiar person, (S) dynamics between insiders/members of in-group and outsiders/members of out-group, (S) dynamics between stranger and familiar person
Published on August 14, 2021. Last updated on August 16, 2021.
Bułat Silva, Zuzanna (2020). TIME in Portuguese saudade and other words of longing. In Bromhead, Helen and Zhengdao Ye (eds.). Meaning, Life and Culture. Canberra: ANU Press pp 211-227
DOI: http://doi.org/10.22459/MLC.2020.11 (Open Access)
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) chóu 愁, (E) morriña, (E) saudade, (E) tęsknota
Published on January 15, 2022. Last updated on January 15, 2022.
Ye, Zhengdao. (2021). The semantics of migrant, immigrant and refugee: a cross-linguistic perspective. In Aleksandrova, Angelina and Meyer, Jean-Paul (Eds.) Nommer l’humain: descriptions, catégorisations, enjeux, 97–122. Paris: L’Harmattan.
This paper investigates and presents the meanings of words denoting people who change, either voluntarily or involuntarily, places where they live. More specifically, it contrasts the meanings of ‘migrant’, ‘immigrant’, and ‘illegal immigrant’ in three varieties of English (e.g. Australian, British and American), and provides a cross-linguistic perspective by discussing the major differences in meaning between yímin (’emigrant/immigrant’) and nánmin (‘refugee’) in Chimpse and their counterparts in English. The analytical and comparative framework used in this paper for contrastive lexico-conceptual analysis is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (e.g. Wierzbicka, 1972, 1996; Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2014). The paper first discusses the larger context in which this methodology is situated (Sec. 2), as well as its basic principles (Sec. 3), before introducing NSM work on nouns for people and some of the key insights on which the present study is built (Sec. 4). Sec. 5 presents the analysis of the terms in question, and § 6 summarizes the implications arising from this study.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) illegal immigrant, (E) immigrant, (E) migrant, (E) migrate, (E) nánmin, (E) yímin
Published on August 15, 2021. Last updated on August 15, 2021.
Wong, Jock and Or, Marshal. (2021). “Is beauty only skin deep?”: The conceptualization of ‘beauty’ in Mandarin Chinese. International Journal of Language and Culture 8(1): 35–61
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00034.won
Abstract:
From a semantic and cultural perspective, one could ask a number of questions regarding the English word ‘beauty’ and the adjectival form ‘beautiful’ when they are used to refer to visual aspects of people. Given that scholars and professionals in the beauty industry frequently use the words to describe people from various cultures, should we assume that each of them embodies a semantic and cultural universal? Given that plastic surgeons and beauticians improve the physical appearance of people, especially women, why do they not use the word ‘pretty’ to promote their services instead? After all, the phrase ‘pretty woman’ is also the title of a popular song first recorded by Roy Orbison in 1964 and later the name of a hugely successful 1990 movie. Why are beauty salons so called? Why are they not called prettiness salons instead? This paper attempts to address such questions by studying the meanings of two Mandarin Chinese words: mĕi/měilì 美/美 丽 (roughly, ‘beautiful’) and piàoliàng 漂亮 (roughly, ‘pretty’). The words are polysemous and this paper focuses on the meanings that are relevant to the pur- poses of describing women. It tries to explain the conceptual difference between a woman who is mĕi/měilì and one who is piàoliàng. Hopefully, the findings will shed light on some of the semantic distinctions that are impor- tant to Mandarin Chinese speakers and thus the questions raised above.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
Tags: (E) mĕi 美, (E) piàoliàng 漂亮
