The Explanatory Power Of Conceptual Integration Theory For English Proverbs

Proverbs are considered as brief sayings in common use created by the masses in the long process of life experience and social practice. They are pithy, comprehensive and easy to understand. As a bright pearl in language, proverbs are crystallization of wisdom and cream of language. As an important part of western culture, English proverbs are not only the crystallization of westerners'wisdom, but also the accumulation of western culture. They have been essential windows for us to know western cultures.Being such an important linguistic and cultural phenomenon, English proverbs have always attracted many scholars'attention both at home and abroad. However, most researches have been done from the perspective of traditional linguistics, including their origins, cultural factors, translation and contrastive studies of English proverbs and Chinese proverbs, etc. Few scholars have done research from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, which is a new point to study English proverbs. Many of them put forward some views and approaches on English proverbs, but all of them do not reveal the cognitive mechanism of understanding proverbs.With the development of cognitive linguistics, Gilles Fauconnier put forward the conceptual integration theory based on mental space theory. This new theory has a whole system of operating mechanism. There are four mental spaces in the basic operation: two input spaces, one generic space and one blended space. In conceptual integration, structures from input spaces are selectively projected onto the blended space. Through composition, completion and elaboration, a new structure is formed in the blended space, which is called emergent structure. Conceptual integration theory has attracted many scholars'attentions both at home and abroad due to its mighty explanatory power. Many scholars have proved its explanatory power from various angles, but few of them apply this theory systematically into the interpretation of English proverbs.In this thesis, theoretical analysis and qualitative study are utilized as research methodology. It is a tentative study that focuses on analyzing the meaning construction and cognitive mechanism of understanding English proverbs through conceptual integration theory. As the core of conceptual integration theory, conceptual integration network has four sub-networks: simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network. Through the analysis, it is pointed out that all the networks can work according to their operation principles to analyze different English proverbs and reveal the cognitive mechanism of understanding English proverbs. It proves the mighty explanatory power of conceptual integration theory for English proverbs and also makes contributions to English proverbs study. Meanwhile, the limitations of this thesis have been pointed out and suggestions made for further study.