A Cognitive Study Of The Meaning Construction Of Two-part Allegorical Sayings

As a special Chinese language form, Chinese two-part allegorical saying has been studied by many Chinese scholars for a long time. However, there is no equivalent language form of two-part allegorical saying in English, so foreign researches on two-part allegorical sayings are relatively insufficient. The domestic cognitive studies on two-part allegorical sayings mainly focus on two aspects:the static understanding of two-part allegorical sayings or the study on the dynamic cognitive process of two-part allegorical sayings. However, it lacks a systematic study on both the static understanding and dynamic cognitive process of two-part allegorical sayings. Therefore, this thesis attempts to use the cognitive theories including the conceptual metonymy theory, the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptual blending theory to make a cognitive analysis of the meaning construction of three types of two-part allegorical sayings. Meanwhile, this research tries to clarify the complementary relationship between the three theories. According to the different structure of the first part of two-part allegorical sayings, we choose three types of two-part allegorical sayings from the authoritative documentary A Complete Collection of Chinese Two-part Allegorical Saying:100pieces of two-part allegorical sayings with the first part as a noun,150pieces of two-part allegorical sayings with the first part as a phrase and150pieces of two-part allegorical sayings with the first part as a sentence. And we respectively select some typical examples from them and apply the conceptual metonymy theory, the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptual blending theory in the cognitive construal of the meaning construction of them. Through a systematic study, the current research reaches a conclusion that the combination of the three theories can provide a more accurate interpretation. The conceptual metonymy theory, the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptual blending theory play different roles in the meaning construction of three different types of two-part allegorical sayings and they appear to adequately interpret the cognitive process and meaning construction of three types of two-part allegorical sayings. The significance of the application of the three main theories in the analysis of the meaning construction of two-part allegorical sayings lies in the following three aspects:firstly, applying the three main cognitive theories in the interpretation of the meaning construction of three types of two-part allegorical sayings can help us have a more in-depth understanding, hence facilitating the comprehension and appreciation of two-part allegorical sayings. Secondly, the explanatory power of conceptual metonymy theory, conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory is verified. Thirdly, it paves a way for the application of the three cognitive linguistic theories in other different language forms, which also tries to gain better explanatory adequacy than a single cognitive linguistic theory and further reinforce the strengths and weakness of these cognitive theories.