Conceptual Metaphor and The Literal–Real Meaning Relationship in Chinese Habitual Expressions: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantic relationship between literal and real meaning in Chinese habitual expressions (xiguanyongyu 习惯用语) from a cognitive-semantic perspective. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory, the study demonstrates that the transition from literal to real meaning is not arbitrary but systematically motivated by embodied human experience. Using authentic dialogue extracted from a contemporary Chinese television series as corpus data, the article analyzes three representative expressions — 不冷不热 (bù lěng bù rè), 脸往哪儿搁 (liǎn wǎng nǎr gē), and 你看你 (nǐ kàn nǐ) — showing how the temperature → attitude, face → reputation, and perception → evaluation mappings underlie their semantic extension. The study further shows that once conventionalized, the core (rational) meaning and the additional (emotive-pragmatic) meaning of such units are processed jointly, as an integrated semantic complex, rather than sequentially. The findings contribute to cognitive phraseology and offer practical implications for Chinese-as-a-foreign-language pedagogy and translation.