English-Chinese Information Intensification

Conveyance of information varies with different cultures. Hence, a language, as a mirror of a certain culture, must have its own specific pattern of communicating socio-cultural information. In view of this, studies on language as a message have long been one of the largest concerns in language research since the information theory was first introduced into linguistics. According to the literature review on this field, the most influential theories are Mathesius' "Actual Division" or "Sentence Functional Perspective", Jan Firbas' "Communicative Dynamism" and Halliday's theories on "Information Structure". Compared with Chomsky's formalism in linguistic study, the functionalism in linguistic information study is a giant step forward. However, with the rapid development of today's linguistic study and interaction of various disciplines, the integration of form and function does not fully satisfy the pluralistic demand of language research. Under such circumstances, as a brand-new paradigm which has a strong interpretative power, cognitive linguistics is widely welcome and acceptable. Cognitive linguistics is the study of language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it (Wen Xu, 1999: 34).It is generally believed that language is the product of human cognition. Therefore, the study of cognitive linguistics has an insight into the correlation between language and human cognition (i.e. mind activities) so as to disclose the nature of language and the secret of human cognition.For this reason, this paper attempts to apply the cognitive linguistics theory-"view of prominence" to the contrastive study of English-Chinese information intensification, and claims that because of the cultural heterogeneousities peoples who use different languages have their own characteristics in cognitive prominence of language, that is, information intensification has its own particular informational pattern in Chinese as well as in English and their devices of realizing it are unique.Based on the predecessors' studies on linguistic information theories, the new concept of "information intensification" is created herein to refer to the study of the relation of informational orderings in language structure to the cognitive prominence of linguistic information. The phenomenon of information intensification is assumed to be realized in different forms with different language systems. So, we make a contrastive analysis of English-Chinese information intensification at the phonological, lexical, syntactical and discoursal levels. Through our investigation, we have found that English and Chinese views of cognitive prominence and the informational orderings of their respective language structures are more alike than different, while each of them is distinctive. In addition, we have pointed out that it is the cultural peculiarities of English and Chinese that result in their cognitive differences in information intensification. Oa the whole, both English and Chinese information intensifications follow three basic principles: (1) intensifying new information; (2) intensifying contrasted information; (3) intensifying the information the speaker wants. These common linguistic features, to some extent, embody the similarity of human cognition. Nevertheless, influenced by the cultural differences between the east and the west, English and Chinese are distinct from each other in the linguistic conventions and devices of realizing information intensification.All in all, this dissertation makes a contrastive survey of English-Chinese information intensification from a cognitive linguistics perspective in an attempt toexamine the specific descriptions of information intensification in English and Chinese. The author hopes to contribute to the contrastive studies on English and Chinese as well as TEFL/TESL in China.There are six chapters in this dissertation. Chapter One serves as an introduction. It introduces the new concept-information intensification and reviews its relevant devel...