The Mechanisms Of Chinese XIEHOUYU Comprehension

Nonliteral language is one of the main methods through which we understand abstract concepts and think at an abstract level. Research on it can help to disclose the secrets of linguistic and cognitive operation. Consequently, nonliteral language absorbs more and more attention and emphasis coming form increasing philosophers, psychologists, linguists and cognitive scientists, and has been one of the hottest subjects in the fileds of current cognitive psychology and semasiology.Chinese XIEHOUYU is one type of nonliteral language, which is unique for Chinese language and used frequently for its fixed form and traditional connotation. In our research, the material base for Chinese XIEHOUYU was built before formal experiments through investigation. Then five formal experiments were performed with the college students as participants. Different types of Chinese XIEHOUYU selected from the material base were embedded in literal contexts or figurative contexts with the purpose of examining the activation speeds and patterns of literal and figurative meanings, and the qualities of Chinese XIEHOUYU were manipulated to explore the factors influencing comprehension.The results showed:(1)familiarity degree of Chinese XIEHOUYU affected the recognition of sentence in figurative context, but did not work in literal context.(2)In the figurative context, familiar Chinese XIEHOUYU were processed more quickly and their figurative meaning were activated as a priorty; while in the literal context, their literal and figurative meanings were both difficult to be active.(3)the reading time for the literalless Chinese XIEHOUYU were shorter than literal Chinese XIEHOUYU in the figurative context, but the pattern reversed in the literal context.(4)In the figurative context, literalness only affect the understanding of less familiar Chinese XIEHOUYU. (5)Transparency was a main factor to influence understanding Chinese XIEHOUYU in figurative context, with the effect of high transparency improving understanding.These results suggested that Graded Salience Hypothesis is plausible for the comprehension of Chinse XIEHOUYU. The comprehension process is also constructive. That is when contexts and the qualities of Chinese XIEHOUYU facilitate the activation of meaning strongly, which means high salience, the meaning will be extracted directly. When contexts and the qualities of Chinese XIEHOUYU inhabit the activation of meaning, which means low salience, it needs to construct the meaning associated with contexts, while the constructive speed and characters of contexts and Chinese XIEHOUYU influence the extent of inhabitation for the meaning construction.