Metaphors in Chinese Funeral Culture: The Interweaving of Life and Death, Kinship, and Morality

Abstract

Chinese funeral culture abounds in metaphorical expressions and symbolic practices, such as returning to the great house, serving the dead as if they were living, the five-grade mourning system, and the final verdict on a person’s life. These metaphors are not merely rhetorical devices but deep-seated forms of cultural cognition. From the perspective of cultural metaphor theory, this study analyzes the linguistic expressions and ritual behaviors in Chinese funerals and explores how they reflect Chinese understandings of life and death, kinship, and morality. The findings are as follows. In the dimension of life and death, metaphors such as serving the dead as if they were living and returning to the great house reconfigure death as the migration and settlement of the soul rather than the end of existence. In the dimension of kinship and family, the five-grade mourning system translates blood relationships into a visible, embodied sign system, thereby confirming and reinforcing family ties. In the dimension of morality, metaphors such as cautious attention to the end and continuing reverence for the distant and the final verdict transform funeral rituals into a practical site for moral instruction and social evaluation. At the social level, the funeral reenacts the differential mode of association in ritualized form, facilitating the integration of social relations and the reproduction of social order. Taken together, the metaphorical system in Chinese funeral culture constitutes a deep-seated cultural logic concerning the continuity of life, ethical order, and social integration.