A Cultural Semantic Cognition Of "Wan" And "Play" In Teaching Of Chinese As A Foreign Language To English Native Speakers

Since vocabulary is the major carrier of meanings, it is significant to study thecultural connotations when one is teaching or learing a language. Conceptual meaning,which is used to give notes in the compilation of dictionaries, is basic to thevocabulary. Thus conceptual meaning can be obtained by consulting a dictionary.However, cultural connotations are implicit and can’t be explained literally only.Therefore it is a little bit difficult for language learners to acquire the culturalconnotations of the vocabulary.Cultural semanitics discovers regularities and rules between culture and semanticmeaning by studying the cultural connotations of the vocabulary. However, thetraditional approach to the study on cultural connotations, which is based on structurallinguistics, can’t give convincing explanations to some cultural connotations. Whenwe make a study of cultural connotations in this paper, we combine cultural modeland cognitive model to give convincing explanations to cultural connotations, whichthe traditional approach fails to do. So we conclude that our study of culturalconnotations is totally based on both cultural model and cognitive model.In the very paper, we make a cognitive study of the cultural connotations of theChinese character “wan” and the English word “play”. By making a cognitive studyof the metaphors in“wan”and “play”, we can draw inferences about other Chinese andEnglish words when we teach or learn. In addition, more language teachers andlearners wil be aware of the significance of cultural connotations via this thesis.The paper contains three major sections. In the first section, we make a study ofthe primary meanings of “wan” and “play” by way of their entries in <ModernChinese Dictionary> and <Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary>.We make a careful and detailed analysis of their original meanings and at the same time acquire a couple of key concepts such as semantic prototypes and categories. Thesecond section is the major part of the paper as it presents a detailed ananlysis of thecultural connotations of “wan” and “play”. As for their cultural connotations,“wan”and “play” have something in common. Meanwhile “wan” and “play” also differ intheir cultural connotations because they belong to quite different languages withdifferent national cultures. We also look into the causes hidden behind their culturalconnotations. The third section presents some strategies while teaching culturalconnotations of “wan” to English native speakers. Those strategies can also be used inChinese teaching to English native speakers when other Chinese charaters withcultural connotations are taught. The conclusion is also drawn in the third section,which points out the limitations of this thesis as well as its originality.