A Cognitive And Comparative Study On English And Chinese Transferred Epithet

Transferred epithet, which is called yijiu in Chinese, is widely used in daily expressions and literary works. It has drawn the interest of rhetoricians, linguists, psychologists as well as stylists for a long time because of its significance in communication. Most of the previous studies of transferred epithet focused on its definition, classification, functions, pragmatic features, semantic features, and have achieved great achievements. The transference of descriptive modifiers is a betrayal of regular grammar, but the wide application of transferred epithet possesses great aesthetic functions and artistic effects. The motivation of their functions lies in the cognitive mechanism at work behind the production and understanding of transferred epithet. This thesis is mainly designed to provide a detailed account and demonstration to the meaning construction of Chinese and English transferred epithet.The present thesis attempts to investigate the inner cognitive mechanism of the production and interpretation of transferred epithet within the theoretical framework of inheritance between connotation and denotation, and also to give a comparison between English and Chinese transferred epithet. To start with, the thesis gives a brief introduction to the previous studies of transferred epithet which offer this thesis some precious materials. And then, the theoretical framework is presented. Firstly, it shows the theoretical background, including the models of category, the logic of taxonomy, similarity and proximity, type hierarchy structure, and then introduces inheritance between connotation and denotation. In the light of the theory, the thesis finds that the premises of the production and understanding of transferred epithet is that the entities transferred epithet involves should have similarities or proximities to each other to make the inheritance between connotation and denotation possible. Any entity, which is classified and stored in the type hierarchy structure by people, has connotation and denotation. The study considers that the production and understanding of transferred epithet depends on the inheritance between connotation and denotation, which are formed from the experience and cognition of human beings. Then the study reveals the reasons for the misunderstanding of English and Chinese transferred epithet. It is because some entities or concepts have some different or special connotation and denotation to English and Chinese people, which makes the people of different cultural backgrounds can not grasp the exact and proper inheritance, and leads to misunderstanding inevitably.The thesis then proceeds to a comparative study on English and Chinese transferred epithet. It analyzes the similarities from the perspectives of model, stability, and structure. The differences have been analyzed from the perspectives of semantic relationship between the modifiers and the entities modified, phenomenon of the same modifiers with different modified, and structure. Also the reasons for the similarities and differences are pointed out respectively.The present thesis is of both theoretical and practical significances. Firstly, the probe into transferred epithet with the inheritance between connotation and denotation provides a comprehensive study to the widely used figure of speech. Secondly, the study finds that it is inheritance between connotation and denotation that allows people to temporarily regard the concerned entities to be identical and provides the logical foundation for transference. Thirdly, the analysis of the similarities and differences between English and Chinese transferred epithet conducted in various aspects contributes to the cross-cultural communication.