Review of Zhao Ming. 2023. Cultural Semantics in the Lexicon of Modern Chinese.Leiden: Brill

Traditional semantics, both structuralist and functionalist, mainly investigates the internal mechanisms of language.However, research into the cultural motivation of semantic change remains limited.This book, which combines lexical semantics with cultural linguistics, examines the cultural influence on Chinese lexical semantics based on linguistic determinism.Apart from the Introduction (Chapter 1) and Conclusion, the book can be divided into two sections: the theoretical bases of the study (Chapters 2-5) and its practical application (Chapters 6-7).Chapter 1 comprises a literature review of the issues within Chinese lexicology and outlines research questions and the layout of the book.Chapter 2 delineates the relationship between semantics and culture by discussing the following topics: culture, language-culture, and lexicon-culture relations.By limiting culture in this book to "Culture" with a capital "C", that is, culture in the broad sense, this chapter examines the relationship between language and culture.Regarding the relationship between lexicon and culture, the author exemplifies cultural factors in word formation, etymology, pragmatics and codability.It is pointed out that cultural semantics revolves around the influence of culture on the lexical system, and the above aspects are not included, thus defining the scope of cultural semantics.The author then elicits two types of cultural semantics: conceptual gap items and items with cultural meaning.Further Chapter 3 delves into how to identify conceptual gap items.It is stressed that the latter include not only culturally reflective items but also those that contain unique cultural connotations within their lexical system.Besides, the author identifies these items according to whether their distinctive cultural background