A Study On The Cognitive Mechanism Of Parody Production

Parody as a figure of speech has been widely used since ancient time. In the west, it first appeared in Chapter 2 of Aristotle's poetics to Hageman's Gigantomachia derived from the word parodia. In China, parody used as a rhetorical tool can be traced back to two thousand years ago since Qin Dynasty, and until 1930s, the term parody was first proposed by Chen Wangdao in the book entitled An Introduction to Rhetoric. Nowadays, parody has attracted more and more scholars'attentions for it has been widely applied in newspaper, advertisements and TV programs. Especially more and more parody words that are popular with young bloods appeared on the internet. Up to now, the researches on parody generally follow two ways. One is to study on parody within rhetorical category, which is interested in its definition, classification, functions and comparative work between parody and some relative rhetorical terms, such as pastiche, satire, and irony. Opposite to the former one, the other is to study parody outside rhetorical field, namely, from pragmatic and cognitive perspective. Generally, the previous study on parody at home and abroad are mostly conducted from a literary perspective or non-linguist perspective, while few scholars study parody from a linguistic level not to mention from a cognitive perspective. Actually, as a figure of speech, parody involves a cognitive operation which is dynamic, active in the moment of thinking. Therefore this paper attempts to make out the mechanisms of parody production by resorting to cognitive linguistics. Behind the parody creation, a set of dynamic cognitive operation is involved, such as the motivation of parody's use, the choice of the original expressions, particularly, the conceptual integration process behind parody production. Within the theoretical framework of prototype theory, especially Fauconnier's conceptual integration theory, this paper attempts to explain the mental operations of the addressers unfolding the mysterious cognitive mechanism when they are intentionally create it and finally tries to set up a framework of parody production from addresser's angle. It can be helpful for people to understand parody expression better. This paper studies parody within a cognitive theoretic framework, which improves the explanatory power and wide applicability of cognitive theory, in particular the conceptual integration theory.