A CIT-based Study Of English Conundrums

As one kind of English riddle, English conundrum is a special language phenomenon. Scholars have analyzed and studied English conundrums from many different perspectives. As to the studies in terms of linguistics, they mainly lie in semantics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. But, what is worth pointing out is that these studies focus on static analysis of language characters rather than on explanation of dynamic process of English conundrums'generation and interpretation.Due to the characteristics of violating stereotyped thought, but being reasonable and sudden-enlightened, this thesis applies Conceptual Integration Theory to interpret English conundrums, since there is novel meaning produced and CIT is good at integrating new meaning. Starting from the perspective of discourse understanding, CIT considers the process of interpreting English conundrums as the process of constructing mental spaces and generating novel meaning. In this way,"conundrum"is naturally cleared up while language clues in both"question"and"answer"are connected in an integration network through mappings and unexpected meaning is integrated. As a result, certain train of thought of interpreting one kind of English conundrums is formulated through applying CIT and its integration network to construe certain kinds of conundrums. Certain ways of thought in answering certain kinds of conundrums are enlightened for other conundrums'explanation in the future.