Interpretative Mechanism Of Chinese Parody Within RPFG Theoretical Framework

This thesis aims to investigate the language phenomenon of Chinese parody and attemptsto illustrate its construction and interpretative mechanism.Chinese parody is called “fang ni” in Chinese language, but for convenience, the authoradopts the word parody to replace “fang ni” in this thesis. Parody is a specific languagephenomenon and is widely used in people’s daily life, which has its own particular features. It isa rhetorical device and a kind of creative expression to convey information by means ofbreaking through their corresponding conventional expression, such as “‘贫二代、拆二代’；‘闲妻良母’；‘横眉冷对亲父母，俯首甘为女子牛’；‘�'头诚可贵，包子价更高；若有烧�'骨，两者皆可抛’” etc, it can be words, phrases, sentences as well as texts. The phenomenon ofparody in fact includes two parts: parodied expression and parodic expression. Parodiedexpression is the source of parody which is imitated while parodic expression is the novelexpression which is derived from the source of parody. For instance,“贫二代、拆二代” are theparodic expressions, and their source parodied expression is “富二代”. Parodied expressionsmust be fixed and well-known language forms such as popular words, songs, idioms and slang;famous poems, and familiar couplet formats, instructions as well as reports etc. Only in this waycan parodic expressions be recognized and the effect of parody achieved.Parodic expression is derived from the prodied one with a little change, which violatespeople’s normal thinking, but it can be still accepted by people. Now that the paodic expressionis an abnormal expression, why it can be widely used and accepted by people and what kinds oftraits qualify parody being so popular. Besides, what is the cognitive mechanism behind suchlanguage phenomenon? Such questions spur the author to do a further research on parody. Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, the thesis tries to build up a RPFGtheoretical framework, which is an integrated theoretical framework by combining referencepoint relationship proposed by Langacker and Figure-Ground theory. In RPFG theoreticalframework, the phenomenon of parody can be divided into parodied Figure and parodiedGround; parodic Figure and parodic Ground; parody Figure and parody Ground. Parodiedexpression is the reference point in the process of comprehending parodic expression and thechoice of reference point can be achieved through the separation of Figure and Ground. In theprocess of apprehending the parodic expression, firstly the parodied expression becomesprominent in people’s cognitive language, which is chosen as the reference point and it has theability to active the potential targets within its dominion, after activating the target whichbecomes the focus of the conceptualizer, it will fade into the background and then the activatedtarget may be invoked as reference point to reach another one, the process goes on until the finaltarget—parodic expression is achieved, which becomes salient in people’s attention and isperceived as the Figure, meanwhile, the changed part in the parodic expression attracts theadience’s attention and is perceived as the Figure while other parts of the parodic expression asthe Ground, The meaning of the changed part in parodic expression let the addressee know whatthe addresser is talking about but the meaning of parodic expression can only be obtained basedon the meaning of parodied expression. After analyzing the interpretative process of parody, theauthor comes to the conclusion.Firstly, parody in fact include two parts: parodied expression and parodic expression.Parodied expression is the source of parody which is imitated while parodic expression is thenovel expression which is derived from the source of parody.Secondly, through analyzing the interpretative process of parody within RPFG TheoreticalFramework, three steps are conducted: the first step is construal of parodied expression, whichmeans the choice of the reference point. the second step is the form construction of the parodic expression, through analyzing the changed part and the original one as well as the Ground withencyclopedia knowledge, the audience can realize how this parodic expression is created andknow that it is not a mistake.; and the third step is the meaning construction of the parodicexpression, which can be conducted based on the meaning of the parodied expression and theparody ground.Thirdly, this thesis builds up its theoretical framework---RPFG(short for Reference PointRelationship and Figure-Ground Theory) by integrating the reference point relationship andFigure-Ground Theory, and applies it to the analysis of interpretative mechanism of Chineseparody, which explores the interpretative power of RPFG Theoretical Framework in dailylanguage phenomenon.