A Cultural Cognitive Linguistic Study of Male Garment Description in The Scholars (Chapter1-30)

Since the mentioning of cultural cognitive linguistics, there is a shift of cognitive linguistics. However, previous studies have primarily focused on simple feature analysis of the Scholars, failing to either uncover the internal dynamic mechanism of how Wu trying to unveil satire topic through males’ garment. To address this gap, this study adopts Wen Xu’s partial concepts about cultural cognitive linguistics by establishing effective framework to find how Wu construct social identity, shape character’s fate, and reflect the rigid Confucian social hierarchy of mid-18th century China. The study intends to address the following three questions: (1) What cultural metaphors, metonymies, framings are embedded in the male garment descriptions in the first thirty chapters of The Scholars, and how do they project the hidden social hierarchies and ideologies of the Ming and Qing dynasties? (2) How does the framework collectively and dynamically contribute to our understanding of the interplay between language, culture, and cognition? (3) What is the cognitive function of male garment descriptions in the first thirty chapters of The Scholars in terms of activating cultural frames and reflecting the socio-cultural context of Wu’s time? Using AntConc for content collection and extraction, the study analyzes the first 30 chapters of this classic book. The findings reveal that cultural metaphorization, cultural metononymization, and cultural framing are effective in analyzing Chinese tradition classics. Interestingly, this paper also finds the internal operation logic among them. Cultural framing, no matter matched or mismatched one, can trigger or map the happenings of cultural metaphorization or cultural metononymization, or both, which is dependent on the specific context and garment descriptions. It also provides practical insights for future classic study.