Method of work

Our work focuses on key emotion terms. These terms will be analysed in the contexts in which they appear, such as verbal and non-verbal, allusive and overt relations among communicative codes. It may be a morpheme, a compound, a more complex expression, or an idiom (zi, ci, chengyu) that directly or indirectly refers to a state of mind, or implicates emotions in various ways. This entry should be a condensation of the narrative structure in which the term is embedded. However, the affective concept is not always clearly or directly expressed through an emotion term, and it is not easy to single out the emotional element in descriptions that appear simply “factual” or “evaluative”. The affective lexicon contains both terms that directly denominate the states of mind and expressions that indirectly refer to them (laughter, smiling, crying, tears, frown). Often the text hints only indirectly at a mental state; sometimes a text describes certain physiological conditions (like “being tense”), which accompany certain emotions; on other occasions we find the description of events and behaviour patterns associated with an emotion, but no linguistic representation of the emotions as such. Sometimes the text resorts to metaphorical or physiological descriptions (like “blushed”, “burning”). Similarly, the emotional concept may only be alluded to through the use of terms that are not properly affective, but concern eliciting conditions or resultant physical conditions (like inappetence). 

The first phase of the work involves the following phases and criteria: 

  1. Formulation of a reference glossary of terms concerning mental states in the chosen Chinese source (thus the Glossary presents the meanings of morphemes and compounds concerning only the affective world), which in turn breaks down into: 
    • Identification of the emotions and moods according to modern criteria, but taking account of the traditional terminology in the Chinese language of the period. 
    • Examination of the terminology in the Chinese language.
  2. Selection and examination of the source 
  3. Analysis of the chosen texts.
  4. Selection of certain terms indicating emotions, attitudes or moods in their context, or similar concepts. The following list gives a guide with various alternatives:
    • emotion (proper emotion terms);
    • generic term (such as in English “emotion”, “passion”, “feeling”, “heart”);
    • disposition, mood or state of mind (a permanent quality or tendency, or the humoured state in a diagnostical meaning, such as in English “sincere”, “skeptical”, “sure”, “tender”, “timid”, “tolerant”, “trust”, “violent”, “virtuous”);
    • evaluating appellations or epithets, or interjections and other “functional words” encoding hidden emotional values (such as in English “dear”, “son of a bitch”, “alas!”, and in Chinese “emotional adverbs” and “emotive interjections”);
    • manifestation, mode of representation, facial expression and conventional gesture (such as “laugh”, “smile”, “cry”, “sob”, “blush”, “pale”, “cursing”), in Chinese often expressed in the complex stative construction;
    • emotional condition and causative term (such as in English “attractive”, “horrible”, “strange”, “wonderful”, “charm”, “sexy”, “charismatic”, “pleasing”, “amusing”);
    • bodily sensation (such as in English “fatigue”, “horny”, “itch”, “pain”, “sleepy”, “aroused”, “relaxed”, “tired”, “hungry”);
    • “symbolic description” (such as in English “metaphors”, “metonyms”), especially figurative bodily images;
    • chengyu
  5. Input of the full text of the selected material;
  6. Input of cards including the following information for each emotion:
    • entry in Chinese, pinyin conversion with number of tone;
    • label: name of emotion; 
    • quotation of related passages (that should be sufficient to give the general context of the emotion) with translation;
    • comments on any metaphorical or idiomatic expression; linguistic and literary notes when they contribute to understand the emotional meaning of the entry;
    • antecedents or motivation of emotion, if they can be inferred from the narrative or requiring particular mention; 
    • ways of manifestation if the emotion is expressed outside; stereotypes
    • position and source.

The conclusive step is the compilation of a database giving the most complete information on the terms which occur in the text, in cooperation with Chinese linguists for translation work, semantic analysis, recognition of metaphors and idioms related to emotional and mental states, qualitative and quantitative analysis of the collected data and finally compilation of an ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EMOTIONS AND STATES OF MIND IN MING-QING LITERARY AND NON-LITERARY SOURCES, including examples and sentences.