A Conceptual-blending Approach To The Meaning Construction Of Chinese Proverbs

The proverb is the creation of masses on the basis of careful observation and consideration of the entities in the world, it can not only reveal the diverse natural phenomena but also express certain truth. As a universal phenomenon of natural language, the proverb has always been noticed by the language researchers at home and abroad, the study has also been done from different levels such as rhetoric, history, syntactic structure, semantics, culture, and so on. Presently, the study on the Chinese proverb is mainly carried out in terms of rhetoric, culture and society, while the cognitive study on its meaning construction has not received enough attention and lacks a systematic analysis. The conceptual blending theory and its conceptual integration network can be applied to probe into the meaning construction and reasoning mechanism of Chinese proverbs in a deep way.Fauconnier (1997) proposes the conceptual blending theory and conceptual integration network based on the mental space theory. In the network model of conceptual integration, four mental spaces are advanced (inputâ… , inputâ…¡, generic space, blended space) which can interrelate and mirror each other through cross-space mapping and selective projection, finally, the blended space occurs and the emergent structure is engendered by composition, pattern completion and elaboration. The whole process makes the meaning produced. The conceptual blending theory aims to show us the cognitive iceberg behind the on-line meaning construction of any discourse.The non-literal Chinese proverbs are taken as the subject in the study, they are categorized into four types from the cognitive level and investigated respectively in four integration network models so that the invisible, unconscious and dynamic cognitive operation in the on-line meaning construction of Chinese proverbs are made explicit. In this way, the study can further prove that conceptual integration is a universal cognitive operation and serves a variety of cognitive purposes. Meanwhile, it can be verified that the mental process of Chinese proverb meaning construction can be illustrated from the cognitive aspect by applying the conceptual blending theory, which can provide an alternative perspective for the study on the Chinese proverb. Furthermore, the cognitive classification of Chinese proverbs in the study differs from the traditional one in terms of the proverb form and content, which may also contribute to the Chinese proverb study.