Toward the metaphorical polysemy of ‘heart’ in Chinese: A Behavioural Profile analysis

This research applies Behavioural Profile (BP) analysis, a quantitative corpus-driven methodology combining Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) to systematically investigate the metaphorical polysemy of the Chinese “心” (heart). Drawing on 1,394 annotated corpus instances across six senses (Organ, Centre / Core, Emotion / Symbolism, Thoughts / Consciousness, Attitude / Aspiration, and Moral Quality), this study analyses 13 contextual features including morphological, syntactic and semantic dimensions. Results from HAC reveal hierarchical clusters and evolutionary pathways. the concrete “Organ” sense extends to abstract domains via dual mechanisms of embodied cognition and cultural models. Besides, statistical visualizations validate the distinct semantic boundaries while highlighting the close relationships between Emotion / Symbolism and Moral Quality. The MCA results showed that key features such as animacy, metaphor complexity, and content type significantly contribute to the boundaries between different senses, with metaphor deliberateness and conventionality playing pivotal roles in abstract senses. The findings robustly evidence Conceptual Metaphor Theory, demonstrating how cultural frameworks interact with universal embodied experiences to shape polysemy. This study pioneers the application of BP analysis to Chinese body-part terms, offering empirical evidence to cognitive linguistics and highlighting the inseparability of language, culture, and cognition in semantic extension.