A Pragmatic-Cognitive Approach To Zeugma: An Integrated Model

Zeugma always draws people's attention by its novelty, simplicity and jocosity. It has long been studied as a rhetoric approach both at home and abroad since the ancient times. Different schools study it from different perspectives (such as semantic, syntax, pragmatic, rhetoric and so on). However, it is devoid of comprehensiveness. The study from the integrative perspective of pragmatic-cognitive is often neglected. No one has studied it by means of integration from Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. Based on a corpus of nearly 100 English expressions, this paper aims to study zeugma under the framework of CBR model. By using the advanced CBR model, this paper tries to conduct a relative full-round analysis of zeugmatic expressions with a view to probing into their cognitive mechanisms of zeugma.This thesis consists of the following five parts:Chapter One provides a general introduction to the whole research, including the rationale, objectives, methodology and data collection as well as the organization of the thesis.Chapter Two offers a literature review of the related studies on zeugma and the gaps found in the previous research.Chapter Three presents an integrative model– CBR Model– after an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of CBT and RT. Zeugma is not only a kind of rhetorical device, but rather a human cognitive approach, which accords with the basic human cognitive law from the known to the unknown, and from the concrete to the abstract. Therefore, based on the complementariness of the two theories, CBR Model can give us a more satisfied explanation to zeugma expressions.Chapter Four firstly deals with zeugma and CBT and RT respectively, aiming to find their respective gap and pinpoint the necessity of CBR Model. Then it focuses on zeugma and CBR Model and gives a detailed diagrammatical analysis to zeugma according to the classification of zeugma expressions,which is more convincing. At last, Chapter Five sums up the whole study, states the findings of this thesis and points out limitations and suggestions for the future study.