The CPM Analysis For The Cognitive Mechanism Of Chinese Xiehouyu

As a unique genre among Chinese idioms, Xiehouyu, with its vividness, popularity and humor, has ignited numerous scholars'interests in this field and prompted them to make abundant descriptions and analyses of Chinese Xiehouyu. Unfortunately, previous studies, however affluent they are, mainly dwelled on the argumentation of the origin, denomination, classification, functions, etc. from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics unilaterally en lieu de modern linguistics and from the perspective of cognition and thinking .To solve the limitations of the previous researches, this paper proposes the Conceptual-blending Prominence Model (CPM for abbreviation), which is primarily based on the linguistic theory of the Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), metaphtonymy and prominence principle. Under the guidance of CPM, the present study endeavors to conduct a meticulous and quantitative analysis of 3,181 Chinese Xiehouyu (exhaustedly selected from The Dictionary of Chinese Xiehouyu corroborated by Liu Yulian and Xu Zhimin) , in order to explore the underlying generation mechanism of Chinese XHY, abided with statistics and ratios.Specifically, mainly pages are devoted to the generation and interpreting mechanisms underlying five types of Chinese Xiehouyu according to the metaphtonymy relations between"the introduction part"and"the explanation part"of one Xiehouyu item under the above-proposed theoretical frame. Besides, the detailed analysis and summary of the prominent element employed in the established corpus further proves that the coinage of Xiehouyu is rooted in people's daily life and experience.