Cognitive Research, New Words In English And Chinese In The 21st Century

As the key in language use, words' changes always have dramatic influences on language. The creation of neologisms is not only the requirement of social development, but also the requirement of cognitive development of human beings. The creation of new words or new meanings for existing words shows how people realize and reflect the reality. Starting from the definition of neologism, this study focuses on the neologisms created in the 21st century, and introduces briefly four social reasons for the continuous appearance of new words. The thesis aims at analyzing the neologisms from two dimensions of cognitive linguistics:semantics and pragmatics. On the one hand, this research probes into the meaning construction of many specific neologisms from the perspectives of Prototype Theory, Conceptual Blending Theory and Conceptual Metaphor Theory; on the other hand, this research discusses how language users apply certain cognitive pragmatic methods to understanding neologisms. Meanwhile, this thesis tries to expatriate human beings'dynamic role in creating neologisms.