The Cognitive Construction And Interpretation Of Xiehouyu

Xiehouyu originated from people’s life practice,with its popularity,vividness and humor loved by the masses.With the rise and development of cognitive linguistics,the study of xiehouyu has shifted from rhetorical perspective to cognitive perspective,different scholars have studied xiehouyu with different cognitive theories,but they mainly focused on the cognitive interpretation of xiehouyu.After summarizing the previous studies,the research perspectives has shifted from static xiehouyu itself to dynamic metaphorical utterance that constructed by xiehouyu.On the basis of relevance theory,the cognitive construction and interpretation of xiehouyu is analyzed as a dynamic process of "ostensive-inferential" communication in verbal communication from the builder to the interpreter,and the cognitive motivation of builder selecting and using xiehouyu has been explained,and the interpretation process of metaphorical utterance of xiehouyu has been explaind by using the inference model of relevance theory,and the pragmatic effect of xiehouyu has been analyzed from it.On this basis,a cognitive process model for constructing and interpreting metaphorical utterance of xiehouyu is established by combining the "linking-washing-converging" mechanism of metaphor and the relevance theory,which explains the process of cognitive construction and interpretation of metaphorical utterance of xiehouyu.In order to observe Chinese learners’ interpretation process of metaphorical utterance of xiehouyu,the author carried out a cognitive interpreting test on four male senior-level Chinese learners whom aged between 25 to 30 by using oral report method.The test result shows that the xiehouyu of daily life character group can be correctly interpreted,literary character group cannot be correctly interpreted,the key to successful interpretation is whether the learner has the background knowledge to interpret the characters in xiehouyu,and then carries on the overall interpretation of xiehouyu.Finally the author proposes that in order to help learners understand and use xiehouyu,teachers can increase learners’ knowledge reserve by explaining relevant cultural knowledge of characters in xiehouyu,and encourage learners to use xiehouyu,so as to exercise their Chinese metaphorical thinking ability.