A Cognitive Linguistic Study Of Chinese Folk Wisecrack(Xiehouyu)

Along with heated discussions and researches on metaphor in recent years in the field of cognitive linguistics, several other metaphorical language forms such as idioms, parables and proverbs have been studied in depth both at home and abroad. Being one of the many Chinese folk language forms reckoned as the live fossil of Chinese culture, Chinese Folk Wisecrack (Xiehouyu, hereafter CFW) is featured by its concise form, vivid image and rich implication and it has long been the subject matter of Chinese philology, drawing the attention from both Chinese linguists and litterateurs as well as philologers. Consequently, various theories have been put forward as an attempt to shed light on its characteristics.As a matter of fact, a large number of cognitive operations are involved in the process of using and understanding CFW whose cognitive significance can never be overestimated. Probing into the cognitive steps involved in CFW use and analyzing the interrelationship among these steps can help us discover more cognitive mechanisms behind metaphorical language comprehension in general and understand better the important function played by them in people's perception of the world. Therefore, a cognitive research on CFW has great theoretical and practical significance.Nevertheless, previous researches on CFW in China mostly stay on the surface with their syntactic and semantic analyses of its inner structure or simple discussions on the relation between CFW and Chinese culture; and scant attention has been paid to the cognitive aspect behind the understanding of CFW. Besides, there is no English equivalent of CFW in the strict sense and the disagreement among Chinese scholars makes the translation of it arbitrary and subjective. As a result, western linguists are not acquainted with CFW, let alone conduct any research into it. In a word, a study of CFW from the cognitive perspective is relatively new and worthwhile.Grounded on cognitive linguists' theories regarding metaphor comprehension, this thesis is designed to provide a detailed account and demonstration of cognitivemechanisms at work behind CFW understanding. The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the theoretical studies on CFW that have been carried out by Chinese or foreign scholars up to now and the significance of a cognitive linguistic exploration into this language form. The second chapter concerns an overview of research on CFW in China. Firstly, definitions are given of CFW and some related terms like idiom, locution and adage etc., which is followed by discussions on their similarities and differences. Secondly, CFW is classified into six basic patterns and twelve complex patterns by the standard of the inherent relation between the two important components of it: descriptive part (Yumian) and explanatory part (Yudi). Thirdly, some related theories proposed by Chinese scholars are reviewed concerning surface structure and deep structure of CFW and semantic association of Yumian and Yudi. The third chapter begins with an explanation of the theoretical framework employed in this study, that is, Fauconnier and Turner's Conceptual Blending Theory (2002). Besides cognitive operations such as mapping and blending, two reasoning forms, that is, inference and analogy, are also at work during CFW comprehension. Therefore, on the combination of Conceptual Blending Theory, Gentner's Structure-Mapping Theory (1983) and Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986/1995), a cognitive linguistic hypothesis on the working mechanism of CFW is suggested, including a proposal that most CFW may be considered as a special kind of incomplete metaphor whose vehicle (usu. Yumian) and ground (usu. Yudi) are explicitly given while the tenor still needs to be determined in the context, an explanation of analogy and similarity as the basis of CFW understanding and a comprehensive illustration of cognitive steps involved in the comprehension process. The paper ends with a case study of CFW in one of Chinese literary works Dream of the Red Chamber and some further discussions on it.