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The meaning of "happiness" (xingfu) and "emotional pain" (tongku) in Chinese - The Australian National University

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This paper undertakes detailed meaning analyses of xingfu, a concept central to contemporary Chinese discourse on "happiness, " and its opposite tongku ('emotional anguish/suffering/pain'). Drawing data from five Chinese corpora and applying the semantic techniques developed by Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) researchers, the present study reveals a conceptualization of happiness that is markedly different from that encoded in the English concept of happiness. Particularly, the analysis shows that the Chinese conception of xingfu is relational in nature, being firmly anchored in interpersonal relationships. Loosely translatable as 'a belief that one is loved and cared for', xingfu reflects the Chinese idea of love, which places emphasis on actions over words and is intrinsically related to other core cultural values, such as xiao ('filial piety'). The paper relates semantic discussion directly to recent research on happiness and subjective well-being involving Chinese subjects, hig

The meaning of "happiness" (xingfu) and "emotional pain" (tongku) in Chinese - The Australian National University Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content The meaning of "happiness" (xingfu) and "emotional pain" (tongku) in Chinese Zhengdao Ye * * Corresponding author for this work Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review 10 Citations (Scopus) Abstract This paper undertakes detailed meaning analyses of xingfu, a concept central to contemporary Chinese discourse on "happiness, " and its opposite tongku ('emotional anguish/suffering/pain'). Drawing dat

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