The Pennsylvania State University
The Department of Applied Linguistics
318 Sparks Building
University Park, PA 16802
Phone: (814) 863-0030 (O)
Email: ningyu@psu.edu
Current position
Professor of Applied Linguistics and Asian Studies
Editorial Positions
Co-editor of the scholarly book series “Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts”, John Benjamins (Amsterdam and Philadelphia).
Co-editor, International Journal of Chinese Linguistics, John Benjamins (Amsterdam and Philadelphia).
Member of the editorial board of the journal Cognitive Semantics, Brill (Leiden).
Member of the editorial board, International Journal of Language and Culture, John Benjamins (Amsterdam and Philadelphia).
Member of the editorial board of the scholarly book series “Cultural Linguistics”, Springer (Berlin).
Member of the editorial board of the scholarly book series “Frontiers of Cognitive Linguistics in China (中国认知语言学前沿丛书)”, The Commercial Press (商务印书馆) (Beijing).
Selected Publications
Books
Ning Yu. 2022. The Moral Metaphor System: A Conceptual Metaphor Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zouheir Maalej and Ning Yu (eds.). 2011. Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures (Human Cognitive Processing series, 31). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Ning Yu. 2009. From Body to Meaning in Culture: Papers on Cognitive Semantic Studies of Chinese. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Ning Yu. 2009. The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective: Culture, Body, and Language (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, 12). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Farzad Sharifian, René Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Niemeier (eds.). 2008. Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, 7). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ning Yu. 1998. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: A Perspective from Chinese (Human Cognitive Processing series, 1). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
The Chinese translation of Ning Yu 1998 The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: A Perspective from Chinese (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins) was published by The Commercial Press (Beijing) in 2023. 於宁 2023《当代隐喻理论：基于汉语的视角》北京：商务印书馆. 孙毅 译
Journal Articles and Book Chapters (since 2011)
Yu, Ning, Tianfang Wang and Yingliang He. 2024. Anger in Mandarin Chinese: “Angry gas
gushing into the sky”, In Zoltán Kövecses , Réka Benczes and Veronika Szelid (eds.), Metaphors of ANGER across Languages: Universality and Variation (Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics, Vol. 8), 211‒252. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.
Yu, Ning. 2023. Metaphors from perception and culture: The case of solidity. Special issue on “Perception, Culture, and Language” of Cognitive Linguistic Studies 10(2): 398‒421.
Ning Yu. 2021. Figurative language. In James M. Stanlaw (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, 1‒5. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Ning Yu. 2020. Linguistic embodiment in linguistic experience: A corpus-based study. In Iwona Kraska-Szlenk (ed.), Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage, 11–30. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Ning Yu and Jie Huang. 2019. Primary metaphors across languages: Difficulty as weight and solidity. Metaphor and Symbol 34(2): 111–126. DOI:
10.1080/10926488.2019.1611725
Ning Yu and Ben Pin-Yun Wang. 2018. Cognitive linguistics approaches to Chinese second language acquisition. In Chuanren Ke (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition, 31–47. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Ning Yu, Lu Yu and Yue Christine Lee. 2017. Primary metaphors: Importance as size and weight in a comparative perspective. Metaphor and Symbol 32(4): 231–249. DOI:
10.1080/10926488.2017.1384276
Ning Yu. 2017. LIFE AS OPERA: A cultural metaphor in Chinese. In Farzad Sharifian (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, 65–87. Singapore: Springer.
Ning Yu. 2017. Metaphor and Metaphorical language. In Rint Sybesma et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 3, pp. 3–8. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_000212>
Ning Yu, Tianfang Wang and Yingliang He. 2016. Spatial subsystem of moral metaphors: A cognitive semantic study. Metaphor and Symbol 31(4): 195–211.
Ning Yu. 2016. Spatial metaphors for morality: A perspective from Chinese. Metaphor and Symbol 31(2): 108–125. DOI: 1Yu-2016b0.1080/10926488.2016.1150763
Ning Yu and Dingding Jia. 2016. Metaphor in culture: LIFE IS A SHOW in Chinese. Cognitive Linguistics 27(2): 147–180. DOI: 10.1515/cog-2015-0080
Ning Yu. 2015. Metaphorical character of moral cognition: A comparative and decompositional analysis. Metaphor and Symbol 30(3): 163–183.
Ning Yu. 2015. Embodiment, culture, and language. In Farzad Sharifian (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, 227–239. London: Routledge.
Ning Yu. 2014. The Chinese expressions and conceptions of the self: A cognitive semantic study. In C.-T. James Huang and Feng-hsi Liu (eds.), Peaches and Plums (Language and Linguistics Monograph series 54), 463–485. Taipei: Academia Sinica Institute of Linguistics.
Ning Yu. 2013. The body in anatomy: Looking at “head” for the mind-body link in Chinese. In Rosario Caballero and Javier Diaz-Vera (eds.), Sensuous Cognition – Explorations into Human Sentience: Imagination, (E)motion and Perception (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, 22), 53–73. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ning Yu. 2012. The metaphorical orientation of time in Chinese. Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1335–1354.
Ning Yu. 2012. Metaphorical expressions of anger and happiness in English and Chinese (reprint of a 1995 journal article). In Patrick Hanks and Rachel Giora (eds.), the 6-volume Metaphor and Figurative Language, Vol. 3. Literary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, 328–359. New York and London: Routledge.
Ning Yu. 2012. Ideography and borrowing in Chinese. In Kenneth Goodman, Shaomei Wang, Mieko Shimizu Iventosch, and Yetta Goodman (eds.), Reading in Asian Languages: Making Sense of Written Texts in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, 68–85. New York and London: Routledge.
Ning Yu. 2011. A decompositional approach to metaphorical compound analysis: The case of a TV commercial. Metaphor and Symbol 26(4): 243–259.
Ning Yu. 2011. Beijing Olympics and Beijing opera: A multimodal metaphor in a CCTV Olympics commercial. Cognitive Linguistics 22(4): 595–628.
Zouheir Maalej and Ning Yu. 2011. Embodiment via body parts: Introduction. In Zouheir Maalej and Ning Yu (eds.), Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages (Human Cognitive Processing series, 31), 1–19. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Ning Yu. 2011. Speech organs and linguistic activity / function in Chinese (a revised and expanded version of a 2009 book chapter). In Zouheir Maalej and Ning Yu (eds.), Embodiment via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages (Human Cognitive Processing series, 31), 117–148. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
