Optimality Of Meaning Construction Of News Cartoons In Conceptual Integration Network

This thesis has applied the conceptual integration theory to the analysis of meaning construction in News cartoons. It is proven that conceptual integration is a general cognitive operation and is full of powerful cognitive force. This theory can provide a new theoretical viewpoint for analyzing the meaning construction, innovation and comprehension in News cartoons with its remarkable features of constructing non-traditional novel meanings on-line for local purposes of thought and action. Furthermore, this thesis has made a special analysis on the optimality in the process of meaning construction in news cartoons, based on the optimality principles of conceptual integration theory. It demonstrates that there are a series of principles working in the process of meaning construction of news cartoons to govern the cross-space projection content from the input spaces to the blend space.This thesis firstly has a brief review of previous studies on conceptual integration theory, and then propose that the main body of this study is to discuss the optimality phenomenon in meaning construction of news cartoons, i.e. of all the elements and vital relations from the inputs, which could be selected and projected into the blend space to take part in the generation of emergent structure. The study reveals that the eight independent optimality principles proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) could effectively govern the process of elements and vital relations selection in the process of meaning construction when projection works. Guided by the pragmatic function of each cartoon, these optimality principles will cooperate or compete with each other and the meaning construction optimality under a single principle or several principles could help the blend structure achieve human scale.