How do we understand ‘age’ and ‘aging’? Cultural constructions of the ‘aging’ experience in British English and Chinese from a linguistic perspective

This study investigates the cognitive constructions surrounding the aging experience in British English and Mandarin Chinese. The study employs corpus data to explore how fixed phrases manifest the perceptions of ‘age’, ‘aging’, and by extension ‘old age’. It lays out the linguistic patterns that are common in each language. By analyzing the similarities and differences, the findings show that the same biological phenomenon is not expressed in the same linguistic patterns consistently across languages, and that culture plays an important role in structuring conceptual preferences. Most distinctively, ‘age’ in Chinese can be a separate entity with an upward-oriented path on the aging JOURNEY which is unfound in English. This study sheds light on the associations between language, thought and culture to foster sensitive communication under the background that aging perceptions may have an impact on older adults' general wellbeing and health behavior. •Both English and Chinese share AGING IS A JOURNEY as the most prevalent conventional metaphor.•Both English and Chinese perceive ‘age’ as a LOCATION on the aging path.•The aging path in English is downward-orientated.•The aging path in Chinese seems to be upward-orientated.•Only in Chinese ‘age’ itself is a moving OBJECT on the aging path.