An Analysis on Conceptualizations of "Anger" in English and Chinese Based on Embodied Semantics

It is revealed that there are far more somatic sensory expressions of "anger" in Chinese idioms than in the English counterparts. Justifies the holistic view about body and mind underlying the traditional Chinese medicine through seeking evidence from interoceptive neuroscience. According to the cutting-edge theories of emotions, represented by James-Lange’s theory of bodily reaction to feelings, interoception theory and Mayer’s brain-gut axis theory, to name only a few, those interior organs such as well as gastrointestinal tracts are almost all involved in the production and perception of feelings. As a matter of fact, an emotion consists of four components, namely, cognition, feelings, bodily reactions and behavior. based on related theories such as brain-gut axis, "anger" evokes the physiological response activates the corresponding brain regions through the interconnection between brain and gut, which also justifies the holistic view on body, brain and emotions lying in traditional Chinese medicine.