A Study On “x Qu Na’r Le” From The Perspective Of Cognitive Sociolinguistics

Since the heat variety show,Dad,Where Are We Going?(爸爸去哪儿)in Hunan Satellite TV has been a heat in 2013,“X qu na’r le”construction has become a popular construction,and has created new meaning.“X qu na’r le”as a question construction has been in Chinese for a long time,and its new meaning has not been created for long,so there are no relevant researches for now.Those authoritative dictionaries and scholars define neologism as new words or new expressions or those words or expressions have new meanings.Therefore this research will study“X qu na’r le”as a neologism.There are always many scholars who have made a lot of researches about neologism from many aspects,like Cognitive Linguistics,Social Linguistics,and Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language and so on.But researches about neologism from Cognitive Sociolinguistics aspect have not been involved yet,so it can not analyze this language phenomenon connecting inside factors with outside factors from cognition and social environment,so that how the“X qu na’r le”construction has formed its new meaning by newly working process is unable to be interpreted relatively comprehensively.Under the Cognitive Sociolinguistics framework, the author firstly tries to use the metaphor, prominence and selection to mutually mend and supplement the shortcomings of those three theories, and builds a model based on the mutual mend and supplement of those three theories(Metaphor, Prominence and Selection, short for MPS,see chapter three). After that, the writer takes this model as the theory framework to systematically study the cognitive working process and semantic, syntactic and pragmatic characters in the social environment of 150 “X qu na’r le” expressions established by this thesis from the biggest two search engines Baidu and Google, and some famous websites like Tianya, Renren and so on, aiming at offering the new use and new meaning of “X qu na’r le” the cognitive motivation and generating mechanism. This research mainly proceeds from the following three aspects:To begin with, Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary(2011) has defined neologism as a new word or expression in a language, or a new meaning for an existing word or expression. So the question construction “X qu na’r le” has created new metaphorical meaning in the use, so this research studies it in the category of neologism. There are a lot of scholars who have made many researches from cognitive, social linguistics and so on, but these are all single aspect researches. Language activities must be processed through cognition, and proceed in the social environment, which will affect human cognition and language producing. Therefore this thesis takes Cognitive Sociolinguistics as the theoretical framework, using the mutual function of cognition and social environment to analyze “X qu na’r le” connecting inside factors with outside factors.Moreover, “X qu na’r le” firstly acts as a question construction in Chinese, but it has metaphorical meaning by new use now. The basis of metaphor is similarity, but it is potential, so the similarity needs to be found in so much information and be highlighted. Besides metaphor is just aother expression of some meaning, so the use of metaphor or not needs to be chosen by cognitive subject according to their needs. However cognitive subject will own a lot of perceptions, representation, memories and so on, so these different consciousnesses will affect the cognitive subjects’ choice, so the consciousness meeting the communication goal needs to be salient. These three theories mend each other, interlocking with the others, so the author builds MPS model based on that, to explain the cognitive motivation and generating mechanism of the new meaning of “X qu na’r le”.Finally, in order to study “X qu na’r le” deeply, this research has created a corpus of 150 items of “X qu na’r le” construction. They are mainly from two big search engines of domestic and the overseas, Baidu and Google and some famous websites like Tianya, Renren and so on. What’s more this thesis has counted, classified the corpus, and concluded its semantic property, syntactic features and pragmatic function. At last, the author has analyzed social factors affecting new cognitive process of “X qu na’r le”.This research has three findings: the cognitive linguistics analysis of “X qu na’r le” will lack of social property, and the social linguistics analysis of “X qu na’r le” will ignore its innate producing mechanism, so it should be under the theoretical framework of Cognitive Sociolinguistics; prominence has helped the completion of metaphor, and it is important to the realization of selection; selection also decides the use of metaphor. Therefore the three theories can mutually mend and closely related with each other, and the model MPS built on the basis of that can explain the generating mechanism of “X qu na’r le”; according to the analysis of corpus, “X qu na’r le” has the meaning of questioning and metaphor, and is available to be subject, object and complement. Its new meaning is mainly on expressing negative feelings, with the function of emotion venting, bantering and euphemistic expression.