Imagery Cultural Transmission In Six Chapters Of A Floating Life Translated By Lin Yutang-A Perspective From Palmer's Cultural Linguistics

Gary Palmer, an American linguistic anthropologist, published his book Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics in 1996, in which he applies cognitive linguistics directly to the linguistics anthropology, proposing cultural linguistics as a new approach towards the way language works. Cultural Linguistics, by its very essence, (Palmer,1999:5) is a theory of mental imagery, which refers to the mental representations of something that we perceive by our peripheral organs, including not only the visual imageries, but also the imageries of touch, sound, taste, smell and dynamics. This theory seeks to understand how speakers deploy speech and listeners understand it through kinds of imagery. Holding that language is the play of verbal symbols that are based in imagery which is virtually structured by culture, this theory takes as the core the imagery, language, culture and their relations, hoping to look into the inner world and cognitive models of language users in each nation.Fu Sheng Liu Ji is the autobiography of Shen Fu, a Qing Dynasty scholar. It is abundant with imageries reflecting Jiangnan Culture and Shen Fu's inner world emotions. Lin Yutang loves this book very much and translates it into English for the sake of transmitting Chinese culture to western world. In his translation, Lin Yutang translates not only the literal meaning, but also the emotional flavor behind this autobiography. His translation shows the higher level of his translation skills; therefore, it is popular among both English and Chinese readers and is preferred by many scholars to conduct their translation studies.Taking Palmer's Cultural Linguistics theory as the backbone and employing qualitatively-based case analysis accompanied by some supplementary quantitative explanations, this thesis scrutinizes the cultural imageries representative of Jiangnan (江南) Culture and Shen Fu's inner world emotions in Six Chapters of a Floating Life translated by Lin Yutang, and analyzes how Lin deals with the transmissions of these Chinese culturally-associated imageries, aiming to prove the potential possibility and profound significance of the application of Palmer's Cultural Linguistics to imagery transmission in translation study.In the light of the above analysis, the study finds that according to the types of the imageries being transmitted, Lin's strategies adopted in the process of his translating can be categorized into four groups, namely, the preserved-imagery transmission, the transformed-imagery transmission, the lost-imagery transmission and the added-imagery transmission. Furthermore, the study also reveals that in the process of imagery transmitting, Lin Yutang tends to preserve the original imageries into the target language, and chooses to transform, abandon or add a new imagery in dealing with cultural-specific imageries containing profound cultural connotations. And thereby, some implications for imagery transmissions could be achieved:the imagery, either cultural-shared, or cultural-specific, is translatable; empathy and cultural transplant are key factors in the successful transmissions of imagery among cultures. It is hoped that this thesis can be of some help to the research in the application of Palmer's Cultural Linguistics to the translation of imagery transmission studies.