Application Of Conceptual Blending Theory To Meaning Construction Of Chinese Zen Poetry

Terse in language, abstruse in meaning, rich in images and mysterious for its ideorealm, Chinese classical poetry is an attractive flower in Chinese literature. Chinese Zen poetry, as a kind of classical poetry, is full of these characteristics. Besides, it has its own features. With Zen doctrine in it, Zen poetry is the highest level of spiritual experience in literature. Because of its charm, Zen poetry is attracting more and more scholars.Due to the little popularity and the difficulty in understanding, Zen poetry is still unfamiliar to most people. Scholars have conducted researches either from literature criticism or pragmatic perspectives, such as from relevance theory aspect. Few studies have been done from cognitive linguistic perspective, which should be of great significance to the study of both Zen poetry and cognitive linguistics.Put forward, developed and perfected by the famous cognitive linguists Fauconnier and Turner with a series of books and articles, Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), one of the most important cognitive linguistic theories, mainly deals with the meaning construction that occurs when we speak and talk. Crucially depending on mappings between mental spaces, CBT can help to derive the emergent meaning in the process of meaning construction. Therefore, to understand the "meaning beyond words" of Zen poems which always don't express their meanings directly, CBT can be of great help.This thesis analyses how CBT is applied in both the composition and interpretation of Zen poetry. The process of conceptual blending is the process of composition. During the composition of a Zen poem, in most cases, the poet chooses image-bearing words to form lines of sentences under certain cognitive models. With the movement of the poem construction, the poet constructs meaning that is spiritual and creates ideorealm which the stated words can't directly express.In interpretation, CBT has significance for readers to fully understand Zen poems. Most importantly, CBT helps readers to correctly catch the meaning with Zen spirits which are not directly put forward with words.Metaphor functions as a basic cognitive tool to build different mental spaces and to define the cross-mapping in metaphorical Zen poems. In some ways, metaphor is blending because many instances of metaphors can be analyzed with blending model.Analogy and allegory help us activate background knowledge to get the unstated meaning of Zen Poetry. They are thinking ways of making parallel cross-mapping between elements in different mental spaces. Using the known to conceptualize the unknown is a vital heuristic with analogy and allegory, which exactly meets the aim of blending:to get something new and creative from the stated words.Possible Worlds theory to fictional Zen poetry focuses on what we call the'product'of comprehension:the structure and characteristics of fictional worlds as the result of complex interpretation processes. It is the basis of building mental spaces in fictional Zen poetry.