Thinking Hearts, Feeling Brains: Metaphor, Culture, and the Self in Chinese Narratives of Depression

Abstract

This paper explores the heart and brain metaphors used in the meaning-making efforts of Chinese individuals diagnosed with depression. Past studies assert that the origin of Chinese language metaphors for thinking and feeling can be found in traditional Chinese medico-philosophical theory, where the heart is viewed as the seat of thought and emotion, and the brain, which constitutes the cognitive center in western theories of the self, is secondary. While most participants employed heart metaphors to express thinking and feeling, many of the participants also employed brain metaphors. Instead of suggesting that this multiplicity implies westernization, this paper argues that cultural understandings of the self can be multiple. To appreciate this, it is necessary to look at spontaneously generated speech in a narrative context. This paper thus analyzes three participant narratives, a process that carries several implications for studies approaching the relationship between metaphor, culture, and the self. INTRODUCTIONIn cognitive linguistics, metaphors of the heart and brain have been held up as exemplars of cultural difference between China and the English-speaking west. Chinese metaphors for both thinking and feeling, argues Yu (2005), are shaped by the underlying cultural model provided by traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy, in which the heart is considered to be both the cognitive and METAPHOR AND SYMBOL, 22(3) Vallée, 1991;Farquhar, 1998;Yu, 2005). In contrast, Yu (2005) suggests that the influence of Western medical philosophy, which tends to separate the "mind" and "body," attributing emotions to the body or heart and thought to the mind, or brain, has given rise to the tendency for Westerners to use heart metaphors for feeling and brain metaphors for thinking (Parrott, 1995). As noted by Yu (2003Yu ( , 2005, however, in the context of "modern" Chinese language, head or brain can also be used to metaphorically express mental experience:It is also where one's thoughts and ideas are stored and one's thinking takes place...Nevertheless, this usage is limited to modern Chinese in a relatively small scope. On the other hand, the bulk of conventionalized expressions, including compounds, idioms, and idiomatic sayings, demonstrate that the heart, rather than the brain, is the locus of the 'mind' as known in English. (Yu, 2005, p. 13) The fact that most conventional Chinese metaphors for thinking and feeling, derived mainly from various dictionaries and texts, revolve around the heart is certainly indicative of the salience of the heart in Chinese language and culture. The fact that the brain can also be used to refer to mental experience, however, suggests that traditional Chinese medical philosophy does not provide the only culturally relevant model of the thinking and feeling self in China. As Yu himself points out, since the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644Qing ( -1911 dynasties, "the functions of the brain as the organ for mental activities came to be recognized" in China (Yu, 2005, pp. 7-8). The...

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