A Study On The Acquisition Of English Zeugma Based On Conceptual Blending Theory

The paper is an empirical investigation into the effectiveness and feasibility of conceptualblending theory, a perspective from cognitive linguistics, on English zeugma in EFLpedagogy. It aims to confirm whether the learners who know the model of meaningconstruction of English zeugma can acquire it more profoundly and thoroughly.English zeugma used to be treated as a stylistic figuration. It is a common practice forteachers to instruct figurative languages in form, accordingly learners can only mechanicallyremember these forms instead of understanding the reason why these language phenomenacome out, which causes learners just know these figurative languages on the surface, notactually acquire and use them.In terms of cognitive linguistics, English zeugma is not only a kind of figurativelanguages, but also a common way of thinking of human beings to conceptualize theobjective world. English zeugma contains a blending way of thinking, and its model ofmeaning construction involves four mental spaces, that is, grounding box space, two basicinput spaces and the blend space. In zeugma, based on the grounding box, two input spacesare established in the explicit and implicit contexts respectively, in which the prominentconcepts are selected and projected into the blend space by mapping mechanism; then in theblend, English zeugma which serves as the emergent structure comes into being by the threecognitive processes: self-negotiation, self-judgement and self-licencing.The current paper tries to apply the model of meaning construction of English zeugmabased on conceptual blending theory to the EFL teaching practice, and investigate itseffectiveness and feasibility by the planned experiment and survey.(1) In the experiment, the non-English major freshmen from Ningbo University are taken as the subjects.According to the score comparison of the pretest and posttest on English zeugma, efficiencyof applying the model of meaning construction of English zeugma based on conceptualblending theory is checked. After that, the results which come from the experiment andsurvey are analyzed by SPSS.(2) In addition, learners who have received the experimentalso are presented the questionnaire which aims to survey the learners’ attitude towards themodel of meaning construction of English zeugma based on conceptual blending theory. Inthe end, the study finds:1. The model of meaning construction of English zeugma based on conceptual blendingtheory can promote learners’ acquisition of it.2. The learners accept the model of meaning construction of English zeugma based onconceptual blending theory.