The Conceptual Structure of Emotional Experience in Chinese

Book excerpt: This is a PhD dissertation that analyzes the metaphors and metonymies found in Chinese emotion concepts, such as ANGER, FEAR, HAPPINESS, SADNESS, and WORRY and looks at the role of culture in the folk models which structure them. Completed in 1989, it was the first detailed attempt to look at Chinese emotion metaphors using the Cognitive Linguistic Framework developed in Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). The content should be equally accessible to cognitive linguists interested in Chinese metaphors, universals of metaphors, emotion metaphors, or to Chinese language learners wanting to expand their vocabulary in a meaningful and systematic way.