Generative Holistic View: The Generation Of Xiehouyu

Xiehouyu is pervasive language phenomenon with distinct Chinese cultural characteristics. Traditionally, rhetoritians'and folklorists'dedication in giving descriptive and prescriptive delineation of various aspects of xiehouyu offer guidelines for people's better understanding and applying in daily conversations. During recent decades, modern linguists, semantists, cognitive semantists and cognitive pragmatists in particular, probe into this old issue by proposing different linguistic approaches with which the interpretation process has been expounded. However, few of these scholars set foot in disclosing the generation mechanism of xiehouyu so that this flourishing puzzle is barely left untouched. That is, how the speaker transfers his/her real intention (the explanatory part) into the introductory part remains unsolved. This being the case, the present study tries to develop a personal interest in the generation mechanism of xiehouyu and attempts to make some tentative explorations in this direction.In this paper, we endeavor to propose a new classification of xiehouyu in the light of three types of metonymy-producing relation evolving from the inherent generation process. Accordingly, xiehouyu based on proximity of entailment, xiehouyu based on proximity of inclusion and xiehouyu based on proximity of coordination can be drawn, which sets the stage for our further discussion in this paper.Apart from this, we also intend to make a tentative exploration on the underlying mechanism of the generation of xiehouyu, whose essence resides in how the speaker derive the introductory part (dependency) from the explanatory part (autonomy).Our key theoretical goal is to set up a workable analytical framework for the most mysterious part that why the speaker is motivated to produce his/her utterance by employing xiehouyu and this account aims to be natural, effective and close to people's common sense. We employ a qualitative and introspective method in our study backed by a considerable quantity of corpus from some Chinese literary works as well as some daily conversations. Our research emerges from Mental Model-Based Pragmatic Reasoning put forward by Xu Shenghuan which, as a dynamic and open system, covers Intentionality Hypothesis, Explicit-Implicit Expression Hypothesis and Stereotypical Relations Hypothesis. It mainly consists of the Autonomy-Dependency Analytical Framework and the Explicature-Implicature Reasoning Framework, with each being responsible for the account of xiehouyu generating and understanding. Sine we lock our attention only on the generation mechanism, the Autonomy-Dependency Analytical Framework will work as the hidden thread running through the whole discussion. The other key viewpoint is generative holism which inspires us to assume"selecting-decomposing-integrating"as the inner mechanism of the generation of xiehouyu.On the basis of the above considerations, this analytical framework can be specified into:(1) The assumption of selecting-decomposing-integrating is predicated on the trigger of xiehouyu utterances, namely, an event environment (linguistic /nonlinguistic or factual/conceptual) from which the speaker's intention is activated.(2) For the speaker, it is crucial to organize a category which centers on members proximate to the function/property essential for his/her real intention. This proximity-driven continuum projects the speaker's psychological activity into real selection.(3) What waits for the speaker is decomposing whose solution lies in the inheritance between connotation(s) and denotation(s). Selecting and decomposing work together to define the central element possessing the function/property to the highest degree.(4) At last, the speaker has to blend some other elements with the central element and integrate them into a well-organized whole close to people's common sense of language, hence the generation of the introductory part. We hope that our creative proposal—selecting-decomposing-integrating will contribute, may be to a lesser extent, to the exploration of the inner mechanism of xiehouyu generation and activate greater interest in attempting more tentative linguistic approaches to further study of Chinese traditional language phenomena.