| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 96 === This study aims to detect gender roles in Mandarin botanical fixed expressions from different perspectives. The analysis is based on six theories. Lakoff and Turner (1989) claimed conceptual metaphor- PEOPLE ARE PLANTS that people are viewed as plants in connection with life cycle. Ullmann (1959) observed hierarchical distribution of Synesthesia. Huang (2002) made the claim of four emotion frame elements. Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991) proposed linguistic coding of concepts, which reveal the relationship between source domain and target domain in metaphors. Chou and Huang introduced (2005) Hantology. Croft (in press) asserts social cognitive linguistics, which suggests that social common background cannot be ignored in understanding a language.
Botanical fixed expressions (BFEs) are gathered mostly from Academia Sinica Ancient Chinese Corpus, Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus Mandarin Chinese, Online Chinese dictionaries of Ministry Education, and Lin Yu-tang Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage.
The text will present four parts. First, based on Lakoff and Turner’s PEOPLE ARE PLANTS, which shows how plants are analogized as female and male stereotypes are observed, and also how plants’ growing stages are mapped to match the life stages of women and men. In addition, BFEs are examined with Heine et al’s coding of concepts. Secondly, with Huang and Ullmann’s theories, BFEs are examined to find the differences between sexes in terms of emotions and senses, and the phenomena of Synesthesia. Third, from the perspective of Hantology by Chou & Huang, the radicals of the BFEs are calculated and analyzed to see the differences between both sexes. Finally, the gender roles in Chinese common social background throughout history are presented to correspond with the findings of the previous parts.
Findings reveal that the descriptions mainly focus on a woman’s appearance and chastity and a man’s ability, knowledge and integrity. A woman’s role is limited to the family but a man participates in society and plays more roles. In terms of senses, vision and smell are mostly used in comparison to a woman’s outward beauty, while taste and touch, acted out by the semantic agent, men, are compared to another domain, the negative social behavior toward women. As for emotions, only in women are their physiological reactions likened to their emotions. From Hantology perspective, the application of the radicals also exquisitely connotes the differences between men and women. Chinese botanical fixed expressions richly manifest the roles of both sexes and the expectations and stereotypes given by Chinese culture.
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