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:
- 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.
- Selection
and examination of the source
- Analysis
of the chosen texts.
- 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
- Input of the
full text of the selected
material;
- 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.