Oxymoron: From The Perspective Of Inheritance Of Denotation/Connotation

An oxymoron is a figure of speech which is full of charm. It is not only widely used intheoretical works and literal works, but also in people’s daily life. An oxymoron is differentfrom other figures of speech in that it is seemingly contradictory and illogical in meaning.However, it is just the contradiction in meaning that expresses the complicated andcontradictory psychological state of people. The use of oxymoron can usually achieve thefollowing rhetoric effects: contrast, humor, irony and emphasis. So oxymoron is the unity ofopposites. Oxymoron has attracted many scholars’ attention, and they have made theircontributions to the study on oxymora. But their researches on oxymora mainly pay moreattention to the structure, classification and rhetorical effects of oxymora rather than thegeneration mechanism of oxymora. In other words, those researches on oxymora don’t tell ushow an oxymoron is produced.The goal of this research is to set up a workable analytical framework for thegeneration mechanism of oxymora. This thesis adopts a qualitative method on the basis of aconsiderable amount of data collected from different sources, and will provide an analysis onthe generation mechanism of oxymora. It is guided by the theory of Denotation/ConnotationInheritance by Xu Shenghuan which consists of the following basic concepts: stereotypicalrelation, Type-Hierarchy Structure, denotation and connotation.Some findings about the generation mechanism of oxymora are drawn as follows:(1) An oxymoron involves two contradictory concepts/categories which are in similarityor proximity relations from the aspects of their denotation(s) and/or connotation(s). Thus therelationship between them can be established, and in certain context, the two contradictoryconcepts or categories can be used together. One can be the modifier and the other can be the modified, and then an oxymoron is generated.(2)This thesis concludes the following two phases of the analysis of the generation ofoxymora.(a)language user should first decide the common concept expressed by the twocontradictory terms in an oxymoron,(b) then constructs the Type-Hierarchy Structure whichtakes this common concept as its super categories. And the two contradictory terms in theoxymoron are the subcategories of the common concept. That is to say, the two contradictoryterms in an oxymoron share the same super category in the Type-Hierarchy Structure.