The treatment of Taoist terms in Chinese-English dictionaries: a study based on Frame Semantics

Abstract This study argues for a frame semantic approach to the treatment of Taoist terms, which are Chinese culture-specific. It takes three Taoist aesthetic terms 虚(xu), 无(wu) and 静(jing) as a case study to explore how Chinese-English dictionaries can make use of semantic frames in the treatment of Taoist terms. As the study shows, a Taoist-aesthetics frame can be constructed in comparison with the Aestheticsframe in FrameNet. When treating Taoist terms, the core frame element “Entity” facilitates the meaning explanation by making the terms more intelligible. The non-core frame element “Circumstances” should be highlighted as it helps the dictionary to provide a more accurate definition of Taoist terms.