A Cognitive Study Of The Understanding Of Oxymoron

The word"oxymoron"was originated from ancient Greek, which means a juxtaposition of two words contradictory or incompatible in meaning. It can yield profound expressive effects. The term seems self-contradictory and illogical, yet it is just this contradiction that evokes people to reflect on its deeper implications. Oxymora are often applied to reveal the contradiction in outside world and to depict the complex feelings inside human heart. Scholars at home and abroad have made their contributions to the research into oxymoron. But traditional interpretation of oxymoron lays much emphasis on its structure, rhetorical effects and aesthetic functions rather than its cognitive operations involved in its meaning construction. Consequently, based on the Conceptual Integration Theory, this thesis aims at providing an analysis and illustration on the process of understanding oxymoron from the cognitive point of view.Fauconnier (1997:1) points out that conceptual integration is a cognitive process as we creatively think and act. Blending is a widely applicable cognitive operation. It matches two input spaces through a partial cross-space mapping. There is a generic space which maps onto each of the inputs. The two inputs are projected selectively onto a fourth space, the blended space, which gets elaborated dynamically. The cross-space mapping exploits shared schematic structure in the inputs or develops additional shared schematic structure. This common structure is contained and elaborated in a fourth space, the blend. The four spaces are connected through the projective links and constitute a"conceptual integration network".On the grounds of Conceptual Integration Theory, oxymoron sets up two input spaces in people's mind and a generic space containing some abstract structures of the two, and then the two spaces are integrated into blended space where the emergent structure appears. Yet the two constituent parts (input spaces) of oxymoron are antonyms, which mean a pair of terms designating opposite concepts, clashes are thus inevitable in the mapping between two mental spaces set up in on-line meaning construction. Hence the counterpart elements of the two inputs contradict each other because of the intense across-space clashes. For the lack of counterpart connections, the blending of inputs comes to a dead end. Contextual analysis, like the catalyst during a chemical reaction, selectively"activates"the counterpart elements that need to be blended. In so doing, we provide the counterparts with the concrete context as well as our background knowledge, structure, and logic, etc. The activated counterpart elements will lose their contradictory characteristics and create some connections across the inputs. All the counterpart elements that are fused by the connections are projected onto the blend. Then, the contextual analysis makes the blending feasible and reasonable. Finally, a new structure emerges in the blended space for the active fusion of the counterpart elements. In a word, contextual analysis eliminates the contradictory relations of the input spaces by selectively"activating"the counterpart elements during the blending process.According to the relationship between the organizing frame and the four spaces in a network, four kinds of conceptual integration networks stand out: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks and double-scope networks. As the simplex network, a"role-to-value"network will not be included, for the complexity of oxymoron involves so much background knowledge, and cultural entrenchment, that it is hard to find any pure simplex network oxymora. Therefore, three types of network—mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network—will be used to illustrate the understanding of oxymoron.The first chapter gives a brief introduction to oxymoron. Then it explains the reasons for choosing oxymoron as topic of this study. After that, it presents the main goal of this thesis: to illustrate the understanding of oxymoron by Conceptual Integration Theory.The second chapter is mainly a literature review on the researches into oxymoron, including its etymology, definition and its theoretical grounds, and explains the two ways of classification, its rhetorical effects, and the componential analysis of oxymoron.The third chapter primarily offers a general illustration of Conceptual Integration Theory from the angles of the origin, constitutive principles, types of integration networks, and organizing frame, etc.The fourth chapter proposes a CIT-based interpretation in demonstrating the cognitive process of understanding oxymoron by several examples of oxymoron applied to further exemplify the interpretation.Finally we conclude that CIT is very persuasive and powerful in explaining oxymoron. Moreover, contextual analysis eliminates the contradictory relations of the input spaces by selectively"activating"the counterpart elements during the process of understanding of oxymoron.