A Study On The Categorization Of The Semantic Field Of Water In Chinese And English

Water is the essence of life and there are plentiful and various categories related to water in human language. The semantic field of water is the collection of words related to water and all these water-related categories are not isolated with each other, but are somewhat universal in cognition.The thesis tries to explore the categorization of the semantic field of water in Chinese and English from the perspective of cognitive linguistics by applying the theory of categorization in the west and traditional Chinese Exegetics study, supported with the language data from People's Daily, New York Times and some well-known dictionaries, giving an analysis on the category of WATER and water-related categories including object category (represented by ALCOHOL and SEA), action category (represented by WASH and BATH), and property category (represented by echoic words of water) with an aim to find out the differences in the categorization process of the semantic field of water in Chinese and English.As shown in the study, there are both similarities and differences in expressing the same or similar categories between Chinese and English. Cognitive universality originates from our common bodily embodiment: similar mappings of WATER in TIME, TRAFFIC and THOUGHT model are due to the flowing feature of water; similar mapping of WATER in POWER model results from the power of water. On the other hand, different cultural connotations concerning water can be found: differences between oceanic culture and continental culture can be seen from the category of SEA; differences in hedonism and rite culture can be seen from the category of WASH and BATH. Based on this, the thesis tentatively puts forward a cognitive model of WATER, considering the influence of cultural model. The category of WATER is the core in the model. On one hand, the category itself is metaphorically or metonymically extended. And on the other hand, as a superordinate category, it is developed into various kinds of other water-related categories.The contrastive study of the semantic field of water in the thesis aims to analyze the categorization process of the category WATER and water-related categories, and reveal the inter-relationship between language, cognition and culture, with the hope to provide some ideas for the development of vocabulary teaching, cross-cultural communication and contrastive linguistics.