A Cognitive Interpretation Of Parody In Netspeak

The popularization of the internet has given birth to a new language variation called netspeak. In the application of the netspeak, it's very popular for netizens to produce novel expressions by using various rhetorical devices, and parody, as an expressive way of expression which meets netizen's need for succinct and novelty has become one of the most frequently used figures of speech in netspeak and hence aroused more and more attention from scholars in various fields.In terms of linguistics, many scholars and researchers have tried to conduct descriptional researches on parody concerning the classifications, the functions and the definitions, etc. In recent years, with the boom of cognitive linguistics, some scholars began to conduct tentative researches on the generation and interpretation mechanisms of parody. A common feature of these researches is that their observations on parody's structure all involve two parts:the source which is the linguistic form being imitated and the parodic expression which is the result of the imitation. However, cognitive linguistics holds that it is our mind that shapes the language, in this way, our view on the structure of parody must go deeper into something in our mind, rather than just stay at the surface.This thesis attempts to reexamine the parody in light of some concepts from cognitive linguistics such as intentionality, explicit and implicit expressions, autonomy-dependency, etc. so as to find out its components and the interrelationship among the components. We give an insight into the intentional content which is the origin of the parody and regard it as an essential component of the parody, thus, the parody's structure includes three components:the intentional content as the source, the imitated form as the quasi element and the result of imitation as the parodic expression. Then, we make a tentative effort to explore the interpretation and production mechanisms of the parody by employing Professor Xu Shenghuan's paradigm of model-based pragmatic reasoning and autonomy-dependency framework. The analysis on the derivation and activation relation among the components of the parody indicates that the use of it in netspeak is not a mere rhetoric ornament to our utterances, it's actually the result of our cognitive process which shows how we perceive certain event represented by its corresponding expression. Specifically, this process originates from the source, i.e., the complete intentional content. Under the guidance of intentional attitude which is the speaker's desire for effects such as criticism, exaggeration, humor, novelty and so on, the speaker derives from the source a quasi element which is an expressive and familiar linguistic form through the manipulation of semantic similarity. Functioning as a transitional element, the quasi element awaits further derivation to reach an expression which can fully represent the source. By manipulating phonetic or (and) structural similarity, the speaker derives from it the parodic expression. While for the receivers, at the sight of the parodic expression, the quasi element which has structural or (and) phonetic similarity with it will be activated in their minds and they will try to interpret the parodic expression by manipulating minimal sets of knowledge relevant with the quasi element. Under the constraint of the context, those knowledge which are relevant with the entities in the parodic expression are made prominent, they elucidate or complement the quasi element, as a result, the full interpretation of the intentional content or the source is reached.