From Event To Usage-event: A Study Of The Generation Of XHYs Under The Rule Of Intentionality

The present study analyzes the generation of Xiehouyu from the perspective ofintentionality.As a unique language phenomenon, XHYs, with its characteristics of being vivid, briefand humorous, have aroused numerous scholars’ interest and attention and prompted them tomake abundant descriptions and analyses of Chinese XHYs. However, the previous studiesare mainly restricted to the descriptive investigations of its definitions, nature, classificationsand functions, etc. from different perspectives. The attention on the dynamic generationmechanism of XHYs is far from enough. Recently, some scholars began to study theunderlying generation mechanism of XHYs from some theories of cognitive linguistics, suchas, Figure-Ground Theory, Conceptual-blending Prominence Model (CPM for abbreviation)and Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT for short), etc. Their studies set a solid foundation forthe further study of this field; however, their studies do not reveal underlying generationmechanism of XHYs, leaving much room for a further exploration.By virtue of the inadequacy of the previous studies, the paper explores underlyinggenerative mechanism of XHYs from a quite different view. It tries to explain how XHYconstructs event into usage-event under the Rule of Intentionality. Xu Shenghuan (徐盛桓,2012) has pointed out that the process of coming into being of the initial shape of sentencerepresentation is a process of cutting the event into the usage-event, making the usage-eventsuitable for the presenting of the event in this particular situation. The process of cutting theevent into usage-event is achieved by a Gestalt transformation, which is constrained bysubject’s intentionality. Intentionality plays a premise role in the process of the generation oflanguage expressions. So the Rule of Intentionality needs to be introduced to make a more scientific exploration of the generation process of initial shape of sentence representation. Byapplying the Rule of Intentionality from event to usage-event to explain the generativemechanism of XHYs, the author shows that the process of generation of XHYs relies on aproximity/similarity transformation from the former part to the latter part, meanwhile,intentionality is running through the whole generation process. According to XHYs, theformer part is a reflection of the event filtered by people’s primary consciousness; the latterpart is the manifestation of the usage-event element constructed by people’s reflectiveconsciousness and it reflects the speakers’ communication intentions. In the process oftransformation from the former part to the latter part, the intentional attitude in theintentionality frame determines which language expressions the speaker will choose toexpress his/her intentional content. And the different characteristics of XHYs reflect thespeaker’s different intentional attitudes.All in all, this paper provides people with a new perspective to explore generativemechanism of XHYs, which is helpful for people to correctly understand this specificlinguistic phenomenon.This paper is composed of six chapters.Chapter One is a brief introduction that provides an overall panorama, in which the paperintroduces the significance, research questions, the methodology and data collection of thecurrent study, as well as the layout of the thesis.Chapter Two is a brief literature review which gives a detailed survey on previous studiesof XHYs. With respect to the insightful preceding researches from different perspectives, thischapter makes a brief comment on their contributions and limitations.Chapter Three shows the analytical framework of XHYs—under the Rule ofIntentionality from event to usage-event, together with the introduction of such usefulconcepts as primary consciousness and reflective consciousness, Gestalt Theory, and intentional content and intentional attitude, which will be adopted in exploring thegenerative mechanism of XHYs.Chapter Four begins with a general survey of XHYs, including the characteristics,classifications of XHYs as well as their pragmatic functions.Chapter Five gives a detailed analysis on generation mechanism of two types of XHYson the basis of framework—under the Rule of Intentionality from event to usage-event.Chapter Six, the conclusion of this paper, presents major findings and provideslimitations and suggestions for the future research.