| Parodic use of Chinese idioms is widely applied in advertisements. It greatly enhances the charm of advertisements in conciseness, refinement and novelty. Previous studies focus on the description and explanation of their vocabulary and syntax. However, these studies haven’t presented a clear picture of the on-line meaning construction process of parodic use of Chinese idioms. This thesis aims to adopt data-analysis methodology to investigate the meaning construction process of parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements within cognitive theories framework including Great Chain of Being Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory.Both Great Chain of Being Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory can be applied for explanation of metaphors, the former for conventional metaphors while the latter for novel metaphors. Great Chain of Being Theory is put forward for the explanation of proverbs. Since Chinese idioms are conventional metaphors and similar to proverbs, this thesis makes an attempt to analyse Chinese idioms with Great Chain of Being Theory, aiming to reveal the meaning construction mechanism of Chinese idioms. As for parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements, information about products is added into original pieces of Chinese idioms, thus the mapping of domains is not adequate for explanation of meaning construction of parodic use of Chinese idioms. Therefore, this thesis tries to apply Conceptual Integration Theory for the explanation of the meaning construction process of parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements.Parodied Chinese idioms are collected from advertisements on major streets of Gulou District, Nanjing. Video media are chosen for collection of data including billboards, LED signs, electronic bulletin boards and posters. The data collection criteria are homophonic parody and non-homophonic parody of Chinese idioms. There are41pieces of parodied Chinese idioms collected and grouped according to four basic network types in Conceptual Integration Theory. One example is listed and analysed in each group.Great Chain of Being Theory is applied to the construction of schemas of original Chinese idioms. On this basis, Conceptual Integration Theory is applied to account for the dynamic meaning construction process of parodic use of Chinese idioms.According to Great Chain of Being Theory, the meaning construction of Chinese idioms involves four aspects. Knowledge about "Great Chain of Being" and "Nature of Things" activates the attributes and behaviors of beings in different levels in the mind. Chinese idioms describe attributes and behaviors of certain kinds of beings."Generic is Specific" metaphor makes their attributes and behaviors map into all kinds of analogical attributes and behaviors of beings. In this way,"Generic is Specific" metaphor help people get better understanding of attributes and behaviors of human beings and beings in other levels in the "Great Chain of Being"."Maxim of Quantity" leaves the most essential characters which lead to conciseness of Chinese idioms.The meaning construction of parodic use of Chinese idioms involves building of four mental spaces:input space about all schemas of the original piece of Chinese idioms, input space about the product, mapping between the two input spaces, selective projection of frames and/or elements from input spaces into generic space and blended space, and production of emergent structure.It is also found that the advertising effects are achieved in the blending process. Discourse economic principles are realized through changing only one or two characters in a piece of Chinese idiom, so that the parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements conveys meaning in the most compact language package. Defamiliarization is given full play through combination of frames because it takes longer time to construct meaning. Consequently, the advertisements leave people strong impression. Audiences’ feeling of familiarity of original Chinese idioms makes the parodied Chinese idioms and the advertisements easy to remember. The ad hoc orientation for beauty or product quality in the process of blending makes products more appealing. Selecting specific Chinese idioms for parodic use according to features of products wins audiences’ approval of products.This study explores cognitive mechanism of parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements. It proves that Great Chain of Being Theory can be applied for explanation of cognitive mechanism of Chinese idioms while Conceptual Integration Theory can be applied for the account of on-line meaning construction of parodic use of Chinese idioms in advertisements. Besides, it is found that duality of meaning of Chinese idioms lies in the mapping in "Generic is Specific" metaphor. |
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