Expressing Pain in Mandarin Chinese: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Lee, Wan-Ju
Abstract
The study aims to explore how pain is conceptualized and expressed in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Despite its commonality shared by all, the instrumental tendency of language seems impracticable in conveying such elusive, private and subjective sensation. Yet, to convey pain, we have to resort to language, an essential medium transferring our knowing into telling (Mishler 1986) and through language, our experience can be noticed, constructed, and assessed (Dyer 2011). The gap between the inexpressible nature of pain and the communicative essence of language is bridged via figurative devices like metaphors and hyperboles. From the widely used pain assessment measure entitled McGill Pain Questionnaire (Melzack 1975), a wide variety of pain sensations are metaphorically represented and categorized into sensory, affective and evaluative pain descriptors. Since then, a number of literatures of pain metaphors were found; notwithstanding, rarely can we identify Chinese counterparts of English pain descriptors, nor is the language of pain in Chinese well studied. To examine pain language in Mandarin Chinese and gain more perspectives into the conceptualization and expressions of pain, data from everyday practice are collected from planned discourse as well as unplanned discourse: Written data were retrieved from Chinese literary works and a health column in United Daily News from United News Online Database from October 1, 1990 to October 1, 2015; besides, verbal data were manually transcribed from the interviews with pain sufferers, mostly fibromyalgia patients, in 2013 and 2014 workshops entitled Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Adopting Johnson’s force schema (1987) and Hopper & Thompson’s transitivity hypothesis (1980) as the theoretical groundwork of our data analyses, we find that people convey their pain experiences through conceptual metaphors like PAIN IS FORCE and THOSE SUFFERING PAIN ARE CONTROLLED OBJECTS. We reveal that the force schema provide the fundamental concrete basis for conceptual mappings in the conceptual metaphor PAIN IS FORCE. Pain is construed as volitional agent that is capable of exerting force on people. Such transfer of action from one participant to another characterizes Hopper & Thompson’s transitivity hypothesis. In other words, the degrees of intensity or impact of the action depends on the transitivity of the clause. On the other hand, people suffering pain are objectified as a result of being controlled or manipulated by pain. In the conceptual metaphor PAIN SUFFERERS ARE CONTROLLED OBJECTS, people portrayed themselves as objects without volition and even without any power to control their own lives, entailing the distress inflicted by pain. Based on the pain expressions in the present study, we further put forth the discussion of the concept of self. We propose that cognitive modulation of pain is possible as long as people’s perspectives toward self and pain change, as manifested in the pre- and post-interview of participants of MBSR workshop. In addition, we argue that like pain self is a “publicly negotiated concept” (Wittgenstein 1953). The self arises through social experiences and in the process language is essential for the transmission of culture: Based on the Chinese character 忍ren “tolerance” and the lexicalized Chinese proverbs and idioms of Confucianism and Buddhism, self-control or self-restraint is encouraged, entailing the diminution of self for the harmonious collective Chinese society. Finally, we propose some possible future studies relevant to pain, inclusive of pain and empathy, pain and memory, and pain and medicine. It is hoped that the present study deepens the understanding of the commonly felt yet rarely discussed sensation and made possible the vicarious understanding via the elaboration of linguistic mechanism of pain expressions.
Subjects
pain
pain expressions
conceptual metaphors
force schema
transitivity hypothesis
self
Type
thesis
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