A DEM Study Of Chinese Name Derivations

Name Derivation means that a speaker, based on his or her own communicative intention, adopts extraordinary explanations(deconstruction the characters, homophony, words meaning)of the names of persons or things for a positive or negative rhetoric effect. Up to now, there have been only a few studies of Chinese Name Derivation and no research has been conducted from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics.The DEM model is proposed by integrating Event-Domain Cognitive Model (ECM) and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, DE and M stand for Double ECM and Metaphor respectively. In the meantime, self-closed database incorporating 119 items of Chinese name derivations has been established based on the collected examples from Name Derivation Art of Mao Zedong, and the World-Wide-Web. Qualitative and quantitative methods have been applied to analyzing all the items with the DEM model.The thesis consists of the following five chapters.Chapter One focuses on a general introduction to this study, which consists of motivation, methodology and data collection as well as the layout.Chapter Two presents the previous study of Chinese name derivation. On the one hand, the author is in the position of summarizing and commenting on the previous achievements of Chinese name derivations, and on the other hand, the paper presents the gap in the previous studies.Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework DEM, which is proposed by integrating Event-Domain Cognitive Model (ECM) and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to bridge the gap.Chapter Four concerns data analysis and discussion. The data will be classified into three types:derivation from the structure,derivation from harmonics and derivation from meaning.Chapter Five deals with conclusion and two leading contributions of this study:1. DEM is proposed on the basis of the theories of the Event-Domain Cognitive Model (ECM) and the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). This study is carried out under the framework of DEM.2. This thesis, for the first time, collects 119 examples from Name Derivation Art of Mao Zedong, and the World-Wide-Web. And these examples are comprehensively and thoroughly analyzed.3. Proving the human cognitive capacities, especially the complex cognitive capacities, play an important role in the construction of the metaphorical meanings.At the end of this chapter, limitations and shortcomings are discussed and some effective suggestions are provided for future investigation.