冤Yuan! Conceptual metaphors for INJUSTICE in Chinese

Abstract

AbstractLaw concerns every aspect of our lives. However, rarely do scholars investigate metaphors of law, let alone those used in Mandarin, to which smaller attention is devoted in metaphor studies if compared to English. In this study I investigated the wordyuan冤, a Chinese word referring to immoral and illegal deeds such as ‘injustice, wrong, tort’, but also ‘vengeance’ and ‘bad luck’, to find the mappings it realises. Previous approaches to Chinese moral metaphors used a source-domain oriented approach, thus finding a limited set of mappings. In this study, I devised a method (MetaCoCoTaC) of finding metaphors at the word compound and collocate level starting from a monosyllabic target-domain word,yuan, that enabled me to find more and new source domains for INJUSTICE, including SOUND, FOOD, MOVEMENT, and ANIMAL. The findings of this research also enable us to account for the polysemy of the wordyuan. Moreover, discrepancies with previous studies were discovered as to the way far more predictable domains, such as VERTICALITY and OBJECT, are actually used. Finally, some unique aspects of the Chinese morphology and the Chinese logographic script that are not systematically taken into consideration in relation to metaphor research were also addressed.