A Study Of English Nonce Words In Netspeak By Chinese Netizens From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

With the entrance of the Information Age, numerous changes have been made to the way we think, live and communicate since1980s. Besides, with the endless emergence of varied new things, phenomena and concepts, a kind of English nonce words in netspeak by Chinese netizens (ENWNCN) has appeared. It provides an innovative way to create new networds by not only reflecting society in a vivid and interesting way, but also revealing Chinese netizens’solicitude for hot issues or harsh reality and expressing the wordmakers’acquaintance of English words and grammar. Although this kind of word is just at the beginning of its development, it is predictable that ENWNCN will have significant consequences for English and gain a tremendous improvement when facing the fact that language keeps alive along with the time.As for ENWNCN, few scholars have studied this peculiar subject before. We find that there are fewer people have conducted a thorough and systematic study of it from the perspective of conceptual blending theory (CBT).With the data mainly collected from SNS, such as www.urbandictionary.com、www.weibo.com www.blog.sina.com.cn/s/bloga3df104801012i31.html and www.renren.com, etc, and by virtue of CBT as the theoretic basis, this thesis conducts an analysis and attempts to tackle three questions:(1) How is ENWNCN formed?(2) What are its features and rhetorical functions?(3) How is the meaning of such a nonce word constructed?The significance of this thesis lies in the following two aspects:(1) Few scholars have conducted a further study of ENWNCN from the perspective of CBT. This thesis can compensate for such a limitation.(2) Fauconnier (2002) once pointed out that, just like the tip of the iceberg, conceptual blending is very crucial to even the simplest kinds of thought, though it is an invisible and unconscious activity involved in every aspect of human life. In the same way, through conceptual blending, we are capable of investigating the part underwater (cognitive mechanism of on-line meaning construction) of ENWNCN. Analyzing ENWNCN from the perspective of CBT is good for us to explore human being’s cognition, while developing the ability to use English and revealing the powerful productivity of language.Through a cognitive study, this thesis resolved the research questions mentioned above:(1) ENWNCN is a lexeme newly created under the network context by Chinese netizens for a single occasion. It deviates from the language norm. Normally, ENWNCN is used to describe a hot phenomenon/issue by Chinese netizens with their viewpoints and attitudes.(2) There are four popular word-formation types in ENWNCN, i.e. affixation, blending, compounding and imitating. Seen from the nature of ENWNCN, we can witness a reformation in every kind of word-formation. The procedure of reformation takes advantage of the fixed existing elements, i.e. Chinese phonetic transcriptions and English free morphemes and affixes, as processed material to produce nonce words. Under the heading of reformation, these formation types are divided with no clear-cut between, say, affixation and analogy, blending and imitating, etc. The motivations of such word-formations include innovative psychology, economical psychology and the need for the same class identification. ENWNCN possesses features like innovativeness, contingency, convenience and dependency on fixed expressions. And these features lead to rhetorical effects of concision, humor and satire.(3) ENWNCN is formed by at least two original elements. Through the different operation mechanisms of four cognitive blending networks, we can realize that the simplex network comprises only the thematic-role assignment to the componential elements, the word constructed by this network is a role-value nonce word. In the mirror network, all the spaces share an organizing frame, and the semantic relationship of the original elements may be represented as coordinate+coordinate so that we call them coordinating nonce words. A coordinating nonce word comes from a mirror network. The metaphoric nonce word and the metamorphic nonce word are the result of the single-scope network because the single-scope network is a typical form of conventional metaphorical mapping from the source domain to the target domain and that the meaning construction of this type features with selective, asymmetrical projection and supra-conventional semantic relations. Punning nonce words construct the semantic structure via a relatively complex process-the double-scope network in which both organizing frames of the inputs contribute to the blend. The striking similarities or sharp differences between inputs bring up the double meaning. The cognitive process of creating ENWNCN can be summarized as follows:the wordmaker perceives the information and his opinions get highlighted, which leads to the stimulation of creating a new word. Afterwards, the wordmaker determines the original elements through reasonable association. Finally, the wordmaker reforms the native existing elements into ENWNCN by means of different conceptual blending networks.