An Analysis Of English Descriptive Riddles From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Descriptive riddles are an interesting and common language phenomenon. So far scholars athome and abroad have studied and analyzed it from various perspectives. In the field oflinguistics, previous studies mainly focused on the semantic, pragmatic and cognitive aspects ofdescriptive riddles. However, most of them focused on such static analysis as the linguisticfeatures of descriptive riddles, its definition, and its category, etc., rather than the dynamicgeneration process of devising and interpreting descriptive riddles.This thesis analyses English descriptive riddles under the framework of ConceptualBlending Theory put forward by Fauconnier (Fauconnier1997). This qualitative study appliesthe four types of blending networks of Conceptual Blending Theory, i.e., the simplex network,mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network, in the dynamic analysis ofEnglish descriptive riddles, during which the meaning construction and interpretation mechanismof descriptive riddles are elaborated and the possible difficulties as well as its causes in theinterpretation process are pointed out.The purpose of this thesis is to explore CBT’s explanatory power for English descriptiveriddles as well as the process of conceptual blending in understanding and interpretingdescriptive riddles. The significance of the study lies in the dynamic analysis of Englishdescriptive riddles, which will further explore the cognitive mechanism of meaning constructionand interpretation in English descriptive riddles. It is hoped that this thesis can make the abstractcognitive process more concrete so as to help us better understand and interpret descriptiveriddles.