Understanding Weather Phenomena via Metaphors in Mandarin Chinese: An Investigation from Meteorological Expressions in Cyber News in Taiwan

https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v1i1.18

Authors

Keywords:

metaphor, meteorological expressions, Taiwan, Mandarin

Abstract

This study aims to assess metaphors expressed in Mandarin weather reports in Taiwan with the theory of conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The study was done via content analysis with the suggested upper concepts given by SUMO (Ahrens, et al, 2003; 2004) in order to classify them into different categories. A total number of 673 weather reports were collected from major online news websites in Taiwan. After analysing, it was found that language users definitely understand weather phenomenon via the features of human beings, attributes of different items, and some are even from abstract ideas. As a result, Taiwanese people comprehend metaphors in meteorological expressions through metaphors of personification, objectification, and abstraction.

Author Biography

Chunying Wang, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology

Chunying Wang is currently a project-based assistant professor in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan, Taiwan. He gets his PhD in Language in Education from the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Dr Wang’s research interests majorly include linguistics, language and cognition, and language education. He also engages in collaborative learning studies.

Published

2020-05-02

How to Cite

Wang, C. (2020). Understanding Weather Phenomena via Metaphors in Mandarin Chinese: An Investigation from Meteorological Expressions in Cyber News in Taiwan. International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies, 1(1), 85–97. https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlts.v1i1.18

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): April Issue

Section

Articles
Copyright & Licensing

Copyright (c) 2020 International Journal of Linguistics and Translation Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.