A Contrastive Study Of The Cultural Lexical Meaning Between Chinese And English

According to cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, translation studies and Sino-English contrastive linguistics, this dissertation has made a systematic contrast of the cultural lexical meaning between Chinese and English in a cognitive perspective. First of all, the author has advanced some initiative philosophical views about the Sino-English contrastive cultural semantics, which include the cognitive view of language, the language-culture interactional epistemology, the multi-level semiotic system theory, the cognitive view of cultural semantic study and the communicative view of translation, (please refer to the appendix of the 31 charts which offers a panorama of the theoretic framework of this paper) The prospective Sino-English contrastive cultural semantics focuses on the research of the lexical cultural meaning, and it is held that words' cultural meaning is a mixture of the interaction between the subjective world of the language users and the objective world where they live, i.e., it is the externalization of different language users' thinking results and cultural mentalities. Methodologically, the author insists that words' cultural meanings should be surveyed through the interaction between the objective reality, the cognitive thinking media and the language users' subjective perception. It is believed that language is an evolutional result of the external objective reality, the linguistic semiotic system and the ethnic culture of the language users.After talking over the definition of words' cultural meaning and its four features, this dissertation has outlined three research principles for cultural semantic study. According to the paper, words' cultural meanings can be classified into five kinds, and the author has analyzed philosophically the five socio-cultural factors, which have caused and formulated words' cultural meanings. It is revealed that the canonized philosophical spirits, i.e., Tao and Logos, have played the roles of primitive force in shaping the cultural spirits of different nations and their thinking modes which channel reversely different developmental paths for words' cultural meanings. The paper points out that words' cultural meanings could be translated in four methods and at three levelsof information according to the four summarized translation principles. As a result, a basic framework of the Sino-English contrastive cultural semantics has been set up through great efforts.The framework of the language-culture interactional epistemology:Canonized philosophical spirits→ philosophical worldviews→national spirit → thinking mode→Harmony between→ethical moral-centred→meditativeEast: TaoHeaven and Man culture thinkingWest: LogosDichotomy between →scientific ration-centred --rationalHeaven and Man culture thinkingmeditative thinking →heterogeneous linguistic view → hypotaxis-overt linguistic view rational thinking →homogeneous linguistic view→ parataxis-covert meditative thinking →imaginative thinking → logograph →high-motivated,implicitly expressedsemanticsrational thinking→ abstract thinking→phonograph→ low-motivated,explicitly expressed rmeditative thinking→ holistic thinking →induction→ high-context communication rational thinking →logic analytic thinking →deduction →low-context communicationChapter One aims at establishing the philosophical basis of contrastive cultural semantics: the language-culture interactional epistemology. First, after analyzing the definition of the cognitive view of language, the author believes that linguistic study is a kind of human science whose multi-dimensional properties worthy of further research according to the balanced, the holistic and the dynamic principles, meanwhile human's linguistic ability is assumed to be a part of their whole cognitive configuration and competence, through which people can only observe, realize and describe the outside world. Language is a petrified manifestation of a nation's cultural spirit, and functionsas an effective channel through which the outside objective world will come into huma...