| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系碩博士班 === 97 === This study aims to find out the emotions and gender stereotypes in Mandarin tactile perception expressions. The analysis is based on four theories. They are respectively the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Johnson’s (1987) theory of image schemata, the linguistic coding of concepts, which reveal the relationship between source and target domain in metaphors by Heine, Claudi, and Hünnemeyer (1991), and Huang’s (2007) four emotional frame elements. In order to explore and demonstrate the interaction and relationship of physical experience to internal states, three research questions are addressed: (1) How do tactile perception expressions map into different kinds of concepts and emotions? What concepts in the target domain are signified via metaphorical mapping? (2) Is there any gender stereotype or bias in tactile perception expressions? (3) How does the metaphorically conceptual system reflect Chinese conceptual model of emotion and gender concepts?
In the present study, we focus on the metaphorical expressions containing characters denoting hands, touching, and other expressions related to tactile perception. Basically, they all contain the “hand” radical. The linguistic data are gathered mostly from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Mandarin Chinese, Web edition of Lin Yutang’s Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage, and Web edition of Ministry of Education Chinese Dictionary.
The findings are divided into three parts. First, the tactile perception expressions are examined based on Heine et al.’s (1991) linguistic coding of concepts to find out how tactile perception expressions were mapped into different kinds of concepts. In addition, through the mechanism of metaphor, metonymy and the image schemata, the tactile perception expressions are found to map into different kinds of emotions. With Huang’s (2007) theory, tactile perception expressions are examined to see how emotions are conveyed through the four emotional elements. Finally, the gender roles in Chinese social background throughout history are presented to correspond with our findings.
Findings reveal that metaphor abstraction about hands focuses on its function and shape rather than on its position or time reference. The emotions involved include all basic emotions categorized by Parrot (2001). In terms of Huang’s (2007) emotional frame elements, the physiological reaction, the Effect, is used to describe emotions the most. We also find some interesting facts about the expressions with other body parts collocated with the tactile perception characters. As for the gender issues reflected in tactile perception expressions, we find that the gender-biased concepts are everywhere in the language uses and were passed down from generation to generation. Our finding conforms to Lakoff’s (1975) suggestion that women undergo language discrimination.
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