Cognitive Construal Of Polysemy In Discourse

Since the ancient Greece, the meanings of language become increasingly the research focus of philosophers and they of course discuss in detail the origins and the developments of meanings. After almost two thousand years of language research, the problems between form and meaning are still unresolved, although diverse theories on meanings emerge constantly. And philosophers and linguists do not reach a unanimous agreement on the correlation between form and meaning. Researches on polysemy can shed new light on the studies on the relation between form and meaning, since these researches focus on the various relations among meanings of the identical word, in addition to the form-meaning relations.The main part of lexicon in a language all possesses the nature of polysemy, that is, even monosemy will show the polysemous feature in certain contexts, so the research on polysemy is undoubtedly involved with the words and their meanings. Generally, words are the combination of forms and meanings. The phonetic forms make up lexicon, while meanings presuppose the functions of lexicon. When the word originally comes into being, it is only the arbitrary symbols with one meaning. The lexicon is, however, not static all the time, but inherently have the tendency to grow towards polysemy. This polysemous tendency originates from social discourse requirements and fixed thought patterns of human beings, so polysemy is consequently a general phenomenon in nature and the research on polysemy deepens our understanding of the correlation between form and meaning in a steadfast manner. The past studies on polysemy mostly focus on the inner motivation and the forms of meaning extension, and furthermore shape a good foundation for three distinctive research traditions with fruitful findings, that is, historical-philological semantic research tradition, structural linguistics' semantic research tradition and cognitive semantic research tradition.In essence, research groups historically pay more attention to the studies on polysemy in the lexical level from the view of language users and language itself, and they are inclined to focus on the inner motivation and mechanism underlining the polysemy, while few researches are done from the view of discourse. The process of construal of polysemy involves the interaction of many factors and a single discipline can not deal with polysemy satisfactorily, and thus to discuss the operational mechanism of polysemy in discourse can enrich the research on polysemy. In view of the current research state, the author of this study attempts to deal with polysemy in the frame of discourse and employ newly cognitive theories from the view of recipients or hearers to study the process of construing polysemy. This thesis is composed of the following six chapters. Chapter One mainly introduces the purpose, research methodology and data collection of the thesis. Chapter Two offers a detailed and historical account for the diachronic review of polysemy and argues tnat from the new perspective of discourse and cognition the polysemous research is unquestionably a dynamic construal process. Chapter Four is the most important part of the thesis and focuses on the interaction pattern in the cognitive construal of polysemous words in discourse with related application. Chapter Five attaches great importance on the theoretical significance of our research on polysemy in three aspects and on the detailed practical application of this study in the fields of practical translation, English teachings, and lexicography respectively. The last chapter is the conclusion of the whole thesis, including the summary of data analysis and the major findings of this study. The result of this study demonstrates that we could efficiently construe the very meaning of polysemous words by means of the three-element interaction analysis pattern which consists of language factors, cognitive factors and discourse factors respectively.