{"id":3927,"date":"2012-04-29T10:51:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-29T15:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3927"},"modified":"2012-04-29T17:44:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T22:44:46","slug":"a-non-stigmatizing-chinese-word-for-epilepsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3927","title":{"rendered":"A non-stigmatizing Chinese word for epilepsy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an article entitled \u201cA new symbol for epilepsy in Chinese\", Mind Hacks<\/a> asserts:<\/p>\n

The Chinese character for epilepsy has been changed to avoid the inaccuracies and stigma associated with the previous label which suggested links to madness and, more unusually, animals. <\/span><\/p>\n

The new name, which looks like this<\/span> \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> just makes reference to the brain although the story of how the original name got its meaning is quite fascinating in itself.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the title and these first two short (sentence-long) paragraphs, in referencing epilepsy, the article refers to \"a new symbol\", \"The Chinese character\", \"the previous label\", \"the new name\", and \"the original name\". It almost seems as though the author were studiously avoiding referring to the Chinese term for epilepsy as a \"word\", which indeed it is. But this is a problem with Chinese language studies in general, in which there is an overemphasis on the characters and relatively little attention paid to words. Most egregious of all, referring to the trisyllabic word n\u01ceoxi\u00e1nzh\u00e8ng \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> (\"brain epilepsy\") as a \"Chinese character\" is dead wrong, since three characters are used to write it, and calling it \"a new symbol\" is equally wrong on the same account, plus it is exoticizing and patronizing to boot. <\/span> \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> is not a symbol, nor is any of the three characters of which it consists new. What is new is the bringing together of the three constituent morphemes in this particular order: brain-epilepsy-disease.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Mind Hacks article continues with a portion of the announcement of the change from the medical journal Epilepsia:<\/p>\n

Apart from the physical suffering and psychological stress associated with epilepsy, persons with epilepsy suffer from inequalities as a result of the old Chinese name for epilepsy \u7672\u7647\u75c7. Epilepsy has long been so described in ancient Chinese writing. The disease was mentioned in one of the oldest medicine textbooks in China, which was firstly published more than 2,000 years ago as \u201cHuang Di Nei Jing\u201d \u9ec3\u5e1d\u5167\u7d93. This clearly described epileptic semiology under two terms: dianji \u7672\u75be and xian \u7647. Not surprisingly then the two were eventually joined together as dianxian \u7672\u7647. Unfortunately after many years, the meaning of the prefix word dian \u7672 became corrupted and associated with madness. Furthermore, the Chinese name became transformed to have proximity to animals. Subsequent names described the disease as the bizarre movements of goats \u7f8a\u7672\u7647 or pigs \u732a\u5a46\u98ce. The names of animals suggested links to animals and the word dian \u7672 carried the strong implication of psychiatric illnesses.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Glossary of Chinese terms:<\/p>\n

n\u01ceoxi\u00e1nzh\u00e8ng \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> (\"brain epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

di\u0101nxi\u00e1nzh\u00e8ng \u7672\u7647\u75c7 (\"epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

Hu\u00e1ngd\u00ec n\u00e8ij\u012bng \u9ec3\u5e1d\u5167\u7d93 (Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic)<\/p>\n

di\u0101nj\u00ed \u7672\u75be (\"epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

xi\u00e1n \u7647 (\"epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

di\u0101nxi\u00e1n \u7672\u7647 (\"epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

y\u00e1ngdi\u0101nxi\u00e1n \u7f8a\u7672\u7647 (\"sheep epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

zh\u016bp\u00f3f\u0113ng \u732a\u5a46\u98ce (\"pig epilepsy\")<\/p>\n

zh\u00e8ng \u75c7 (\"disease\")<\/p>\n

f\u0113ng \u98a8 (\"wind\") f\u0113ng \u760b (\"craziness; insanity; wildness; madness\")<\/p>\n

The Mind Hacks article concludes:<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re wondering where the bit about the \u2018bizarre movements of goats\u2019 came [sic] I suspect it\u2019s from a type of fainting goat<\/a> that looks like it has seizures and falls over. You can see them \u2018in action\u2019 in this YouTube video<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, the link is mistaken as the goats do not have seizures. The effect is caused by their muscles locking up, independently of their brain, by a condition called myotonia congenita<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The announcement in Epilepsia mentions that from 2008 an effort was made to promote the new term n\u01ceoxi\u00e1nzh\u00e8ng \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> (\"epilepsy in the brain\"), but it didn't catch on until the Chairman of the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong declared that it would thenceforth become the standard name for epilepsy in hospitals under its governance.<\/p>\n

The new name does support a less stigmatizing attitude toward epilepsy, since it removes the connection with mental illness and animal behavior of the earlier words that were applied to the malady. But it must be pointed out that, as of 2011, the new word became official only in Hong Kong, not in the whole of China. And, to reiterate, n\u01ceoxi\u00e1nzh\u00e8ng \u8166\u7647\u75c7<\/span><\/span> (\"brain epilepsy\") is not a \"symbol\" or a \"character\"; it is a \"word\", \"term\", or \"name\".<\/p>\n

[A tip of the hat to Ben Zimmer]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an article entitled \u201cA new symbol for epilepsy in Chinese\", Mind Hacks asserts: The Chinese character for epilepsy has been changed to avoid the inaccuracies and stigma associated with the previous label which suggested links to madness and, more unusually, animals. The new name, which looks like this \u8166\u7647\u75c7 just makes reference to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-medicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}