A Cognitive Semantic Analysis On Dialectical Two-part Allegorical Sayings In Sichuan

As a unique language discourse exclusively possessed by China,two-part allegorical saying is the crystallization of collective wisdom ofChinese people during their daily life and work, which reflects people’s lifeexperience and emotion. Two-part allegorical saying prevails amongordinary people and literary works for its humorousness, vividness,simplicity, flexibility and rich cultural connotation. Being influenced bygeographical location, social customs and other cultural factors, dialecticaltwo-part allegorical sayings display dialectical characteristics andnationality features, although resembling largely with those in commonlanguage.Since1920, domestic scholars have done lots of researches into two-partallegorical sayings from the perspective of origination, denomination,categorization, structure, functions and translations, which have laid solidfoundation for further researches. With the development of cognitivelinguistics and the influence of foreign scholars’ researches into idiomaticexpressions, some scholars began to study the meaning construction processof two-part allegorical sayings and its backstage working mechanism in the perspective of cognitive linguistics. This paper collects more then500pieces of representative Sichuan dialectical two-part allegorical sayingsfrom authorized dictionary of two-part allegorical sayings, and books onSichuan dialect and then categorizes them into six types in terms ofGeeraerts’model of classification of idioms in English and the features ofthe first part of two-part allegorical sayings. They are conceptual associationtwo-part allegorical saying and the homophonic association (the sourcecould be a thing, situation or a person). According to this classification, thispaper will conduct a qualitative and inductive analysis on the collection databy employing the metaphor, metonymy and their interaction from thecognitive linguistic perspective to address the following questions:(1) Whatare the characteristics of Sichuan dialectical two-part allegorical sayings?How do these characteristics constrain the interpretation of Sichuandialectical two-part allegorical saying?(2) What are the cognitivemechanisms and methods employed in the meaning construction process ofdifferent types of allegorical sayings’ in Sichuan dialect? And how thesemechanisms interact with each other?(3) Compared with sayings inChinese mandarin, what are the differences of Sichuan dialectical two-partallegorical sayings’ meaning construction? Based on the classification and analysis on those two-part allegoricalsaying collected from Sichuan dialect, the conclusion can be summarized asfollows:(1) Two-part allegorical sayings in Sichuan dialect are loaded withheavy dialectical and cultural characteristics such as phonetic, semantic andsyntactic features which are salient in the meaning construction process ofhomophonic association two-part allegorical sayings.(2) Different types oftwo-part allegorical sayings employ different working mechanisms to realizemeaning construction and most of them rely on the joint interaction ofmetonymy, metaphor and folk knowledge. Almost all types involve ametonymy which lay a foundation for the metaphorical mapping. Notwo-part allegorical saying relies only on metaphorical mechanisms.(3)Compared with two-part allegorical sayings in Chinese mandarin, themeaning construction of Sichuan dialectical sayings are more restrained bypeople’s folk knowledge schemas, dialectical features and ethniccharacteristics.The aforementioned findings will help us understand the nature andprocess of two-part allegorical sayings’ meaning construction and prove theexplanatory power of cognitive linguistics. Meanwhile, conductingcognitive analysis on two-part allegorical saying in Sichuan dialect will reinforce people’s comprehension on Sichuan dialect as well as the localculture.