The use of body part terms in Taiwan & China : analyzing 血 xue 'blood' & 骨 gu 'bone' in Chinese Gigaword v.2.0

Abstract

This article, examining the qualia roles retrieved from the metaphorically/metonymically used body part terms in news texts, addresses the similarities and differences of such uses in Taiwan and China. Analyzing the behavior of 血 xue ‘blood’ and 骨 ‘bone’, two corporeal terms with relatively high visibilities compared with 肉 rou ‘flesh’ and 脈 mai ‘meridian’ (Duann and Huang 2015) in the Chinese Gigaword Version 2 (Huang 2009), this research have the following findings: (1) For the use of 血 xue ‘blood’, the agentive role predominates in both Taiwan and China, which is not in line with the argument in Duann and Huang (2015). (2) Regarding the use of 骨 gu ‘bone’, the telic role predominates. However, China uses it in personification much more often than Taiwan does. (3) The unique dimension of a place triggers the use exclusive to the place.