A Cognitive Probe Into Computer Terminologies And Internet-related Expressions

With the popularity of computer and Internet , the emergent computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions have become indispensable parts of human life. The study of computer and Internet-related terms has aroused a lot of interest in the linguistic circles. Nevertheless, previous researches were confined to the lexical, grammatical and phonological characteristics, rhetorical effects, pragmatic and sociological significances of computer and Internet-related terminologies, and little attention has been paid to the systematic and comprehensive explanations of computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions from the cognitive point of view. Many computer terms and Internet-related expressions are not created accidentally or randomly, instead, they are semantically motivated. The study of these terms and human cognition can not be separated. The theory of cognitive linguistics helps people to understand the formation and development of computer and Internet-related terms.This thesis consists of seven chapters. In addition to the introduction and the conclusion, there are five chapters as the body of the whole thesis.Chapter Two is a review of the research topic—computer terms and Internet-related expressions and the theoretical basis of this thesis. In this part, the author offers studies of computer terms and Internet-related expressions both in China and abroad. Besides, the theoretical basis of cognitive linguistics including conceptual metaphor theory, conceptual metonymy theory, iconicity theory and categorization theory (including decategorization theory) in particular are enumerated.Chapter Three provides a metaphorical analysis of computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions. Grounded in people's everyday interaction with the world, metaphor is a basic cognitive process of mapping the structure of a concrete source domain onto an abstract target domain. Conceptual metaphor provides a theoretical basis for understanding and exploring novel byproducts of the computer and the Internet—computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions. Metaphors are pervasive in computer terms and Internet-related expressions. For instance, the understanding of the conceptual metaphor in Internet-related expressions—THE INTERNET IS A HIGHWAY requires people to transfer their familiar experience in the real highway domain to the new information highway domain. Conceptual metaphor not only prompts netizens in a joint effort to create new computer terms and Internet-related expressions, but also serves as a cognitive mechanism for extending and refining them.Chapter Four is about the metonymical analysis of Internet-related expressions. Metonymy is a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same domain. The use of metonymies in Internet-related expressions involves the process of substituting a salient part of the linguistic components for the whole conceptual network. The PART FOR WHOLE relationship is widely used in the formation of Internet-related expressions. This thesis discusses the conceptual metonymies in Internet-related expressions mainly from the phonological level and the lexical level. The application of conceptual metonymies in Internet-related expressions meets the netizens'psychological needs to convey the maximum information within minimum time.Chapter Five gives an account of the iconic representation in computer terms and Internet-related expressions. Iconicity refers to the motivated relationship between linguistic forms and the referent meanings. Iconicity, as a cognitive tool, will not only help the further understanding of the nature of computer terms and Internet-related expressions and the relationship between computer terms and Internet-related expressions and cognition, but will also make their learning and application more meaningful and interesting. According to Pierce's division of iconicity, this thesis divides the iconic analysis of computer terms and Internet-related expressions into three parts, namely, imagic iconicity, diagrammatic iconicity and metaphorical iconicity. Homophones, onomatopoeias, pictographs and emoticons are prominent manifestations of imagic iconicity in computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions. The subcategories of diagrammatic iconicity including quantity iconicity, symmetrical iconicity and markedness iconicity are explored in Internet-related expressions. Metaphorical iconicity in computer terms and Internet-related expressions lies in the metaphorical mappings between the linguistic forms and meanings.In Chapter Six, the author proposes meanings of computer terms and Internet-related expressions are category-based. The family resemblance principle is a powerful tool for explicating the meaning extension of Internet-related expressions. The meaning of computer terms is related to the meaning of the ordinary words. Computer terms and ordinary words are from the same semantic category where meanings of ordinary words are more representative than those of computer terms. As the prototypical member of the linguistic category, ordinary words comprise the most common attributes associated with other members of the category, while computer terms as peripheral members have only one or a few attributes of the category. It is easy for people to understand meanings of computer terms by referring to the same attributes that computer terms share with ordinary words. Meanwhile, netizens develop many new expressions of computer terms and Internet-related expressions from the remaining ones. This method of creating computer terms and Internet-related expressions reveals netizens'cognitive tendencies of generating new words in the subordinate level category from old terms in the basic level category. Besides, the theory of decategorization which exhibits the dynamic features of language is supplementary to the theory of categorization. The decategorization of Internet-related expressions describes the changes among different Internet-related word categories. The decategorization reveals the way in which language system adjusts itself to meet the emergent expressive requirement of human cognition.Chapter Seven is the concluding part which sums up the whole thesis and points out the limitations and suggestions for further research.As new research areas, computer terminologies and Internet-related expressions are of abundant research values. The study demonstrated here is just a tentative one. The author hopes this thesis would invite more attention from scholars in this new challenging linguistic field.