Death Metaphors in Chinese TV Series: Four Case Studies
Abstract
Death has been a taboo subject in Chinese culture. Studying how Chinese people conceptualize death is an important way to better understanding Chinese culture. The current paper adopts the multimodal metaphor theory as the theoretical foundation and explores the death metaphors in some Chinese TV series. The present study finds five death metaphors, and they are DEATH IS DOWN, DEATH IS SETTING, DEATH IS GOING OUT, DEATH IS BIRTH and DEATH IS DARKNESS. The source domains are presented in the mode of pictorial signs and color while the target domain is presented by the mode of pictorial signs alone, or the mode of spoken signs alone, or sometimes by the two simultaneously.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Barcelona, A. (1997). Clarifying and applying the notions of metaphor and metonymy within cognitive linguistics. Atlantis, 19 (1), 21-48.
Barnden, J. (2010). Metaphor and metonymy: Making their connections more slippery. Cognitive Linguistics, 21(1), 1-34.
Eggertsson, G. T., & Forcevile, C. (2009). Multimodal expressions of the HUMAN VICTIM IS ANIMAL in horror films. In C. Forceville & E. Uriós-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal Metaphor (pp.429-49). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Forcevile, C. (2009a). Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: agendas for research. In C. Forceville & E. Uriós-Aparisi, (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp.19-42). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Forceville. C. (2008). Metaphor in pictures and multimodal representations. In R. W. Gibbs (Ed.). The Cambridge handbook of metaphor and thought (p.469). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hao M. Z. (2021). Study on multi-modal metaphor of death in child death education picture book. [Master thesis, Shanghai International Studies University]. CNKI. https://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbname=CMFD202201&filename=1021065305.nh.
Huang C. H. (2021). A study of death discourse in the animated film Coco: from the perspective of multimodal metaphor. [Master thesis, Liaoning University]. CNKI. https://kns.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbname=CMFD202202&filename=1021060029.nh
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by (p.7 & 37). Chicago: University of Chicago press.
Langacker, R. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol.1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Mendoza F. R. (1997). Cognitive and pragmatic Aspects of metonymy. Cuadernos de Filologıa Inglesa, 6 (2), 161–178.
Rohdin. M. (2009). Multimodal metaphor in classical film theory from the 1920s to the 1950s. in C. Forceville & E. Uriós-Aparisi (Eds.), Multimodal metaphor (pp.403-28). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sobrino, P. P. (2014). Multimodal cognitive operations in classical music. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, (11), 137-168.
Sorahi, M. A. (2013). The interaction of multimodal metaphor and metonymy in death announcement posters in Iran. The Stockholm 2013 Metaphor Festival Vers 2.0 August 29–31, 2013, 99.
Zhang H. & Lu W. Z. (2010). Cognitive metonymy (p.30). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Zhao, X. F. (2011). New development of conceptual metaphor studies: Multimodal metaphor. Foreign Languages Research, (1), 1-10.
Zhu, Y. S. (2007). Theoretical foundation and research methods in multimodal discourse analysis. Foreign Language Research, 138(5), 82-86.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12865
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2023 Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Share us to: 
Reminder
- How to do online submission to another Journal?
- If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
- Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
- Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases:
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Articles published in Higher Education of Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
HIGHER EDUCATION OF SOCIAL SCIENCE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures 
