Tentative Research On Prototype Theory And Stereotype Theory From The Cognitive And Communicative Perspectives

Many researches have been done on the prototype theory and the stereotype theory in fields like linguistics, anthropology, cognition and psychology. And from the very beginning of their formation, they have been applied into different theoretical and discipline fields. In linguistics field, the prototype theory is mainly used to analyze vocabulary and its structures, literature works and compile dictionaries. The stereotype theory is mainly applied into fixed allocation, expression in semantic formation referring to fixed expressions toward a certain group and individuals. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics communication, the prototype is precipitated in human’s subconsciousness. Once stimulated by the outside world, the prototype will directly influence people’s cognition and human communication. And the stereotype is an important mental process existing in the key link of cognitive processing structure. Researches have revealed that on an abstract level of category, individuals mainly use prototypes to present characteristics and our brain mainly activates left hemisphere, but in subordinate category, individuals mainly stereotype different concrete things and activate right hemisphere. Just because the prototype theory and the stereotype theory have a high degree of relevance and integration, the author makes bold tentative attempt to find the intrinsic formation mechanism in cognitive communication.The author makes some researches of an integration of the prototype theory and the stereotype theory from the cognitive and communicative perspectives in language and then analyzes the newly integrated proto-stereotype theory’s explanatory potential. There are altogether six chapters, among which, chapter three is a tentative theoretical research and the focus of the thesis, and chapter four is a corpus analysis which aims at testifying the newly-formed theory.The theoretical achievement of the thesis is the newly integrated proto-stereotype theory proposed by the author through a tentative study. It is researched through studying the internal mechanism from the cognitive and communicative perspectives so as to find its linguistic explanatory potential.