Abstract
The present research investigates the embodiment of color metaphors with a particular emphasis on the two earliest-acquired Chinese basic color terms hēi 黑 ‘black’ and bái 白 ‘white’. The phenomenon of color metaphors manifests ubiquitously across diverse human languages, wherein color terms undergo multifarious metaphorical extensions into abstract semantic domains, such as tāde xīn hěn hēi他的心很黑 “His heart is quite black [Evil/Malevolent].” The theory of embodied cognition posits that both concrete and abstract concepts are fundamentally grounded and anchored in simulations of actual perceptual experiences, which are derived from multimodal interactions with the environment through the sensory-motor and emotional systems. Regarding the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the metaphorical uses of color terms can serve as linguistic evidence to support that lots of abstract concepts are embodied in the perceptual experiences of concrete color concepts. However, despite the theoretical underpinnings, the embodiment of color metaphors remains comparatively limited in empirical support. This research, centered on the two Chinese basic color terms hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’, endeavors to explore how the sensory-motor and emotional perceptual experiences of natural colors are utilized to conceptualize the diverse abstract notions via employing the corpus-based Behavioral Profiles approach and the image-based Visual Analysis approach. Three main studies have been undertaken to address three crucial but unresolved questions.Study 1 (Chapter 4) entails a corpus-based, cognitive semantic analysis of the Chinese color term hēi ‘black’ to investigate how the sensory-motor perceptual experiences of the black color are metaphorically associated with eight metaphorical senses of hēi ‘black’. This analysis employs the Behavioral Profiles approach with a dataset of 800 sentences, drawn from natural corpora, that were manually annotated by 44 contextual features. The features collectively span a wide range of linguistic information, encompassing collocational patterns, morphosyntactic attributes, semantic properties, and discourse information. A two-step statistical analysis is performed: the first is discerning the clustering membership of these meanings with the Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering technique; the second is identifying the prototypical usage patterns of each cluster with the Multiple Correspondence Analysis method. The results reveal that the eight metaphorical senses of hēi ‘black’ fall into three clusters with distinct usage patterns. This study demonstrates that understanding of how the abstract notions metaphorically conveyed by the color term hēi ‘black’ can be traced back to the perceptual property of the black color, the lowest brightness, with cognitive bases of Perception and Change of State.
Study 2 (Chapter 5) shifts the spotlight to the twelve metaphorical senses of the Chinese color term bái ‘white’. The inquiry here is directed towards understanding how the sensory-motor perceptual experiences of the white color are conceptually associated with the metaphorical extensions of bái ‘white’. Analogous to Study 1, the methodology leans on the corpus-based Behavioral Profiles approach. A dataset of 1,200 sentences forms the foundation, each subjected to manual annotation with 51 contextual features. The statistical analyses mirror the two-step procedure deployed in Study 1. The Behavioral Profiles outcomes unveil a significant classification of the twelve metaphorical senses into four clusters, each characterized by distinct usage patterns. This study underscores that the diverse metaphorical extensions of bái ‘white’ find their roots in three distinct perceptual properties of the white color, namely, absence of hue, highest brightness, and zero colorfulness, based on the cognitive bases of Perception and Change of State.
Study 3 (Chapter 6) introduces an image-based visual analysis that delves into the perceptual (dis)similarities between the literal and metaphorical senses of hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’. The aim is to investigate the potential role of emotional experiences in shaping color metaphors, particularly from the perspective of valence dimension. Methodologically, the Visual Analysis approach guides this exploration, leveraging a dataset comprising 2,400 images sourced from Google Image. These images correspond to all the literal and metaphorical senses of hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’, as well as a pair of terms anchoring positive and negative affective polarities. The results demonstrate the essential role that emotional experiences play in the construction of color metaphors. Inconsistent emotional valence may weaken the degree of perceptual similarity between a pair of literal and metaphorical senses of a color term but cannot dismiss such similarity among them. Beyond the confines of corpus data, this study presents non-linguistic, sensory evidence to substantiate the embodiment of Chinese color metaphors with an innovative, image-based empirical approach.
In summary, the findings showed the pivotal roles that sensory-motor and emotional experiences assume in unraveling the embodiment of Chinese color metaphors. Pertaining to the sensory-motor facet, Study 1 unearths that the eight metaphorical senses of hēi ‘black’ find their anchoring in the lowest brightness property of the black color. In parallel, three perceptual properties of the white color (absence of hue, highest brightness, and zero colorfulness) are at work in conceptualizing the twelve metaphorical extensions of bái ‘white’, as explicated in Study 2. Regarding emotional dimension, Study 3 reveals that emotional valence significantly influences the degree of the perceptual (dis)similarities between the literal and metaphorical senses of the two terms. The dissertation provides much-needed empirical evidence to the theoretically puzzling issues regarding the embodiment of color metaphors via synthesizing corpus and image data. It makes valuable contributions in theoretical advancements in the areas of conceptual metaphor and embodied cognition, and an innovative move in methodology with the Behavioral Profiles approach and the Visual Analysis approach.
| Date of Award | 15 Dec 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Meichun LIU (Supervisor) & Chun Yu KIT (Co-supervisor) |