Semantic Ambiguity And National Culture

Facing the trend towards interdisciplinary, cross-linguistic and intercultural development, modern linguistics is quick to integrate new ideas in relevant disciplines into its own field, having language analyzed, described and explained in depth from multilevel and multidimensional perspectives and revealing the nature and functions of language in a more comprehensive and profound way. The establishment and development of a number of interdisciplinary sciences such as cultural linguistics, fuzzy linguistics and cognitive linguistics are the direct results of such integration among linguistics and other disciplines. Originating in the 1960's and 70's, fuzzy linguistics has expanded the researching scope of linguistic studies and brought new momentum to the discipline, making it possible to explore and analyze linguistic phenomena from a new perspective. Language is fuzzy as well as accurate. With fuzziness as one of the intrinsic characteristics of natural language, fuzzy phenomena are not rare in language. As part of the semantics, fuzzy meaning plays an important role in communication.Language is a cultural phenomenon as well as a social phenomenon. It is the carrier of national cultures; it is not only an important part of the national culture but also a major means of constructing and spreading the national cultural from generation to generation. Conditioned by culture, fuzzy language reflects, in terms of semantic fuzziness, the distinct features of that culture.Semantic fuzziness comes into being during the cognition process of human beings. And cognitive psychology is essential to the production and recognition of semantic fuzziness. Studies of modern cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics have shown that language is the product of human being's cognitive activities and is also the instrument for such activities. The meaning of linguistic symbols is the result of categorization and conceptualization of the subjective world by human beings. Semantic fuzziness is produced in the process of categorization. Further, cognitive activities are conducted under certain cultural background and influenced by the national culture. In the light of these, theintrinsic relationship between language and culture can therefore be detected through analyzing the cognitive activities of human beings, or in other words, the production of linguistic symbols and their meanings. This dissertation attempts to shed light on the close connections between semantic fiizziness and its national culture by way of studying categorization, which is one of the basic advanced cognitive activities of human beings. In terms of the laws governing the production and development of semantic meanings, the process of linguistic categorization can be divided into two stages: the formation of basic semantic categorization and the formation of complex semantic categorization (realized through transformation of semantic categorization), during which semantic fuzziness and nationality are produced at the same time.Based on classification of the world, cognitive activities of human beings are constrained by man's cognitive capability and cognitive needs, and the objective reality. At the depth of one's mind, there exists some kind of psychological mechanism of classification, which determines the mode of categorization. The bases of this mechanism are gestalt principles. As fuzziness of the objective world itself and of human thought is manifested in some of the basic concepts during categorization, blended with some factors of national culture, the meaning of linguistic symbols has come to bearing fiizziness and nationality.The transformation of semantic categorization, based on association, connects and interprets new concepts with old ones through cognitive mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy. Association is more often than not caused by similarities among different objects, which in turn produce fuzziness. On the other hand, association cannot be conducted out of its subject's culture; the way by which a new category is assoc...