A Cognitive Exploration Of The National Cultural Connotation Of Chinese Characters

In the1980s, Professor Wang Dechun proposed to study ‘the study of nationalcustoms of language’ from the perspective of National Cultural Connotation (NCC)and suggested that a new subdiscipline of linguistics should be formed, that isNational Cultural Semantics (NCS).‘As a manifestation of the national culturalsemantic feature in the language, NCC reflects the history, customs, and habits of thenation and is heavily tinted with that nation’s culture. It is an additional culturalconnotation attached to a linguistic unit on the basis of its conceptual meaning.Therefore, without the national and cultural background, it is almost impossible tounderstand the implication of the language unit.’(Wang Dechun,1997:122) NCC isbound up with culture and cognition. The formation and understanding of NCCdepends largely on the basis of people’s perception of a particular culture. NCC is theextension or transference of conceptual meaning inspired by metaphoric andmetonymic associations under the national cultural background. The emergence ofNCC is the result of the mutual effect of cultural elements and cognitive model withthe properties of uniqueness, differentiation, similarity and blending.NCC is a kind of temporary connotative meaning in accordance with a certaincultural context, coming from speech activities. It gets established in the languagesystem after repeated presence and recognition by the nation. NCC is a commonphenomenon of different national languages, and is a new field of study of semantics.NCC is not only reflected in the morphemes, single words, phrases, idioms, but alsoin the daily communication expressions and discourses. The NCC is not the same oreven the opposite because of different cultural differences.Nowadays, with more and more foreigners learning Chinese, NCC is theimportant content of teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) with thepurpose of cross-cultural communication. Chinese carries thousands of years’ culture,with abundant culture-loaded words in all aspects. As a distinctive part of Chinese culture-loaded words, animal words have rich NCCs; these words can contribute tothe understanding of the history and culture, folk customs and the spirit world of theChinese nation.This paper mainly discusses the NCC of hu and hu words in Chinese. Tiger, asthe king of beasts in Eastern culture, has rich NCCs. Through the inductive andcontrastive study of the NCC of hu/tiger (words) in Chinese and English, we find that:1) National culture-loaded words are cultural carriers, whose NCC can get fullyembodied only in language context; the interpretation of NCC is the semanticinference by a subject implemented within the overall framework of culture andcognition through the function of metaphoric and metonymic associations andconceptual blending mechanism;2) The study of the NCC of hu/tiger (words), can beapplied to the study of other national culture-loaded words;3) We must take intoadequate consideration the NCC of national culture-loaded words instead of theirconceptual meaning in translation of these words or discourses; and4) The study ofNCC will have an important influence on dictionary compiling, interculturalcommunication and TCFL.