Cognitive Mappings and Cultural Motivations in Chinese Yu-Related Idiomatic Expressions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the cognitive and cultural conceptualizations of yu (jade) through an analysis of 383 Chinese quadrisyllabic idioms, employing metaphoric, metonymic, and metaphtonymic frameworks. By defining cultural metonymy and cultural metaphtonymy, this research contributes to the expansion of cultural–cognitive studies and offers insights into how core cultural symbols are conceptualized in idiomatic expressions. Key findings include: (1) the identification of A HUMAN BEING IS YU as the dominant cultural metaphor, primarily mapping personality traits and talents with a positive semantic prosody and a nuanced gender pattern; (2) metonymic mappings that foreground yu’s acoustic property and cultural-epistemic attribute of high value; and (3) two recurrent metaphtonymic structures – metonymic reduction of metaphoric source and target – which generate layered meanings by grounding abstract mappings in tangible attributes and refining them within cultural-pragmatic contexts. These patterns collectively establish yu as a core philosophical schema within the Chinese conceptual system, motivated by the Confucian junzi ideal and the yin-yang cosmological framework, forming a symbolic network distinct from the materially focused semantics of English jade. This research provides systematic linguistic evidence for the architecture and distinctiveness of this conceptual system and recommends future corpus-based and cross-cultural methods to test the specificity and vitality of these patterns.