The Color Term 'Bai (White)' in Chinese：Research on Its Metaphorical Meanings
| Autor: | Chen, Wan-Hua, 陳婉華 |
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| Rok vydání: | 2012 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 100 This thesis aims to analyse the metaphorical meanings of the color term “Bai/ 白” in Mandarin Chinese based on the theoretical frame of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. First, according to the semantic expressions of the Chinese color term “Bai/白”, this study divides its meanings into two types: concrete/ literal meaning and abstract/ non-literal extended meanings. As implied by the name of the semantic types, the former means the concrete nature of the color in visual—“white” and includes noun phrases and adjective phrases mostly; the latter expresses abstract meanings and contains two secondary types, conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy, to discuss the diverse meanings of the Chinese color term “Bai/白.” On the other hand, this thesis also examines the metaphorical mapping process of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白” which conforms to The Mapping and Invariance Principle: the metaphorical mapping of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白” is cross-domain mapping; the metonymic mapping of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白” is within a single domain. They map from the source domain to its target domain and keep the inner structure of image schema the same. As well as, from the semantic distinction of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白”, this study presents that the Chinese color term ”Bai/白” contains more negative connotations than positive connotations. Therefore, the color term ”Bai/白” is an negative word in Mandarin Chinese. Meanwhile, on the ground of four-word fixed expressions composed of the two Chinese color terms “Hei/黑” and ”Bai/白” (for instance, heibaifenming “黑白分明”, diandaoheibai “顛倒黑白” and so on) and the data collection of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白.” in this thesis, this study also discusses the contrastive meanings between the two Chinese color terms “Hei/黑” and ”Bai/白.” In addition, through the research on the metaphorical meanings of the Chinese color term ”Bai/白”, this thesis concludes four factors that affect the semantic transfer from the concrete reference to abstract extensions: the nature of white color, the link between the surroundings and people’s perception, life culture and historical significance in traditional Chinese, and the influence of loanword translation and foreign culture. Finally, the result of this study confirms that the language phenomenon of metaphorical extensions is derived from the foundation of people’s bodily experiences and it constructs not only the language phenomenon of word decoration but also people’s mind and behavior. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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