On the Conceptual Metaphor of Chinese Characters Yin and Yang in Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon

In TCM culture, it is very common to see metaphors. We can apply what we have already known about the world to the biological phenomena and the regulation of diseases which we may not know a lot. Based on this kind of analogy, it forms many metaphorical concepts or conceptual metaphors. Yin and Yang, as a pair of Chinese characters with high frequency in TCM classics such as Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, are a great example of the use of conceptual metaphor. In the past years, many researchers have devoted themselves to studying the meaning of these two Chinese characters, in particular, in the context of Yin-Yang theory. However, previous studies fail to do a systematic research on the conceptual metaphor of Yin and Yang. Therefore, this paper is concerned with the study of Yin and Yang from two different aspects—the meaning of Yin and Yang in Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon and the conceptual metaphor of Yin and Yang in the Yin-Yang theory. In the process of research, the author reads a number of documents and TCM classics concerning Yin and Yang. Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that the conceptual metaphor of Yin and Yang in TCM can be summarized to stand for the attributes of two opposite aspects of interrelated things or phenomena, and Yin and Yang possess four different kinds of relations among them. Besides, the formation, development and changes of all things result from the contradictory movement of Yin and Yang with unity of opposites. Or we can say that the four relations of Yin and Yang run through TCM when it comes to body structure, physiology, pathology and pulse manifestations. The research on the conceptual metaphor of Yin and Yang in Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, in a sense, can help people better understand the conceptual metaphor in TCM language and figure out the meaning of Yin and Yang.