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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 11:1 (2020) ► pp.96–123

Metonymic and metaphoric meaning extensions of Chinese FACE and its collocations

| Northeast Normal University
| Northeast Normal University

This paper studies the extension of conventional meanings of Chinese FACE expressions in their collocations as well as the collocations themselves through metonymy and metaphor. The data with five FACE expressions included are sampled from the corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics at Peking University. The conventional meaning of these five FACE expressions is ‘the surface of the front of the head from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin and from ear to ear’. The conventional meaning of FACE in its collocations is metonymically extended to ‘facial expression, emotion, attitude, person, health state, affection, sense of honor, etc.’, and metaphorically to ‘the front space or part of something, a part, a side or an aspect of something, the surface or the exposed layer of something, the geometric plane in math or scope/range of something, etc.’. When Chinese FACE is collocated with other words, its meanings are also extended through metonymy-metonymy chains, metonymy-metaphor continuums and metonymy-metaphor combinations. The meanings of Chinese FACE collocations (phrases) are mainly metonymically extended when used in certain contexts.

Keywords: Chinese FACE expressions, metonymy, metaphor, meaning extension, collocation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
    • 2.1An interaction model for collocates
    • 2.2The prismatic model of FACE collocations
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Metonymic or/and metaphoric meaning extensions of Chinese FACE in its collocations
    • 4.1Metonymic meaning extensions of Chinese FACE
      • 4.1.1 face for expression
        • expression for emotion and emotion for attitude
        • expression for attitude
      • 4.1.2 face for appearance
      • 4.1.3 face for person
      • 4.1.4Metonymic conversion of FACE (mian [面])
        • Conversion from noun to verb
        • Conversion to adverbial
    • 4.2Metaphoric uses of Chinese FACE
      • 4.2.1 face for front space or part of something
      • 4.2.2 face for part, side or aspect of something
      • 4.2.3 face for surface or exposed layer of something
      • 4.2.4 face for geometric plane in math, or scope/range of something
      • 4.2.5Metaphoric conversion of FACE
        • Conversion from noun to word of measure or classifier
        • Conversion from noun to particle of locality
    • 4.3Chinese FACE meaning extensions through metonymy and metaphor
      • 4.3.1Metonymy-metaphor combination: face for reputation, honor, and prestige
      • 4.3.2Metonymy-metaphor continuum: face for face color and for color of any entity
  • 5.Metonymic meaning extensions of FACE collocations (phrases)
    • 5.1Metonymies of FACE color
      • face color for health state
      • face color for emotions
      • face color for attitudes
    • 5.2Metonymies of FACE temperature
    • 5.3Metonymies of FACE size
    • 5.4Metonymies of FACE age
    • 5.5Metonymies of FACE quality
    • 5.6Metonymies of FACE brightness
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.17008.lin
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