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Metaphors in Chinese Accompanying Gesture Modality and Cognition

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Book cover Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10709))

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Abstract

Chinese accompanying gestures are a common phenomenon in life, and native speakers of Chinese use gesture modality to express metaphors. This study analyzes metaphors in Chinese accompanying gesture modality from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and cognitive neuroscience rather than the multimodal metaphor theory. Both spoken language and accompanying gesture modalities of metaphors are integrated into discourse, indicating that metaphor creation is based on general cognitive rather than linguistic features. The case study of Chinese accompanying gestures shows that conceptual metaphors can be cognitively activated when they are not expressed in oral modality. The close interaction between modality and language indicates that metaphors are a dynamic attribute rather than a static in the physical and interactive context. The study of metaphors in accompanying gesture modality provides a specific case for further studies on metaphors and offers support for creating a non-literal language cognitive model.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Lab of Information Service Engineering, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100101, China

    Dengfeng Yao

  2. Lab of Computational Linguistics, School of Humanities, Center for Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Dengfeng Yao, Minghu Jiang & Abudoukelimu Abulizi

  3. Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Renkui Hou

  4. Special Education College, Beijing Union University, Beijing, 100101, China

    Lifei Shu

Authors
  1. Dengfeng Yao
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  2. Minghu Jiang
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  3. Abudoukelimu Abulizi
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  4. Renkui Hou
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  5. Lifei Shu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Minghu Jiang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Peking University , Beijing, China

    Yunfang Wu

  2. National Taiwan Normal University , Taipei, Taiwan

    Jia-Fei Hong

  3. Peking University , Beijing, China

    Qi Su

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Yao, D., Jiang, M., Abulizi, A., Hou, R., Shu, L. (2018). Metaphors in Chinese Accompanying Gesture Modality and Cognition. In: Wu, Y., Hong, JF., Su, Q. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10709. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73573-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73573-3_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73572-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73573-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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