A Study On Chinese Beauty And Ugliness Common Words

Shuowen Jiezi thought that "the Chinese characters, at one side, were taken near from the body, and at another side, were taken far from the objects". The way of "taken near from the body" in the work of creating Chinese characters reflects the universal law in human cognition, that is the whole body, including limbs, head, mouth, ear, nose, tongue, is the starting of cognition. Cognitive linguistics, emerged in linguistics abroad in recent20years, attaches great importance to the status of body in human cognitive activities, and many Chinese scholars have applied it to the study of traditional vocabulary. Based on the theories of cognitive linguistics, Tan Dailong, Zhou Wende (2007) propose the research methods of "body-oriented" in vocabulary study. Physical Beauty is a category of Chinese vocabulary system, which mainly depicts the human traits. Study of this kind of words, is in line with the way of "taken near from the body", also in line with the research methods of "body-oriented".The thesis is based on the common words of physical beauty and ugliness.In Chinese, the minimum combinations of words are mostly monosyllabic, therefore, monosyllabic words are the objects of this study. First, the thesis collects monosyllabic words of physical beauty and ugliness from the past dynasties dictionaries and related books. After investigation,26common physical beauty and ugliness words are selected out to be studied.The thesis mainly focuses on the following research method:By combination of diachronic and synchronic study, the thesis selects several typical literature to analysis in each historical period. With the combination of synchronic description and diachronic analysis, qualitative and quantitative research, macro and micro perspective study, the thesis sorts out the use of the physical beauty and ugliness words in each time.From the analysis of the physical beauty and ugliness words, the thesis emphasizes on several issues, including the common words in synchronic usage, the development and changes of lexical meanings of common words, the combination ability, comparison of English and Chinese etc.. At the same time, the words in dialect, and some rules of language development are combined in the study to find out some rules.The thesis includes six parts:Part one is the review of the study of Chinese vocabulary and Chinese common words. The research content of this paper, the method of research, the significance of the research, the object of the research are introduced. The second part is the investigation of the words in different historical periodsThe third part is the investigation of common parts of speech of these words. The Chinese physical beauty and ugliness words can be used as a noun, verb and adjective.The fourth part emphasizes on the combinations. The combination with other physical beauty and ugliness words, the combination with the antonym are studied.The fifth part studies the development and evolution of these common words. The frequency of use, the development and changes of the meaning, the development of some compound words are analyzed.The sixth part is a contrastive study of English and Chinese words. First, the thesis finds out the expression of beauty and ugliness words in English. Then, the comparison of physical beauty and ugliness of commonly used words in Chinese and English are proposed.The significance of this research are as follows:First of all, the thesis studies the commonly used words in the physical beauty and ugliness words from the synchronic and diachronic comparison angle, which can not only depict the historical development track of individual words, but also display the overall situation of a history of graphic vocabulary, which vividly depict the three-dimensional framework of lexical development, and can provide reference for studying other words in Chinese, and contribute to the development of Chinese lexicology.Secondly, cognitive linguistics is a new subject in twentieth century. The thesis draws lessons from the related theories of cognitive linguistics to study Chinese beauty and ugliness words so that new theory and research ways can be approached to the study of vocabulary study, which can give a new angle to the study of Chinese traditional vocabulary.Third, the comparison of physical beauty and ugliness common words in English and Chinese can provide help to the study of language, and provide a model to study further to other semantic category, and promote the national exchanges and cooperation in English and Chinese-spoken countries.