What do Chinese bidirectional Life–Xì (‘Drama’) similes/metaphors tell us about metaphorical bidirectionality?

Abstract

This study investigates bidirectionality in figurative expressions by focusing on a pair of explicit bidirectional similes/metaphors in Chinese. This pair of similes/metaphors is also a saying: rénshēng rú xì, xì rú rénshēng (‘life is like a drama, a drama is like life’). The juxtaposition of bidirectional life–xì (‘drama’) similes – and the bidirectional pattern of metaphorical thought that motivates them – is rarely addressed in metaphor studies. By drawing on discourse examples in which the pair of metaphors is used, this paper examines how the bidirectional figurative expressions are interpreted in discourse and what light the pair of metaphors can shed on metaphorical bidirectionality. Building upon the recent discussion of metaphorical bidirectionality and extended conceptual metaphor theory, this paper develops an enriched understanding of bidirectionality, which is conceptualised as a symmetrical perspective that regards two subjects as interacting with one another on a more or less equal footing, or the principal subject and subsidiary subject as being reversible, and which exhibits unsettling metaphoricity in the literal–metaphorical continuum.