A Cognitive Analysis Of Zeugma

Zeugma is regarded as one of the important rhetoric devices and a novel use oflanguage. In recent years, zeugma expressions in English not only appear in literaryworks, but also frequently used in our daily life. It always draws many scholars’attention and interest by its extraordinary rhetorical and pragmatic effects, such aseconomy, novelty, conciseness, salience, vividness and a sense of humor or music.Now, more and more scholars study zeugma expressions from the cognitiveperspective to probe into its cognitive interpretation.For using one cognitive theory can not achieve a more comprehensiveunderstanding of English zeugma, this study proposes a cognitive model whichincludes lexical coercion and the Cognitive Reference Point Theory. These twotheories complement each other to interpret English zeugma aiming to get a better anddeeper understanding of different features of this novel linguistic phenomenon. Andthe author’s mainly purpose is to disclose the syntactic, semantic features andpragmatic effects with specific examples of English zeugma. Also, the study isintended to probe into the operational mechanism of the processes of producing andunderstanding zeugma from the cognitive perspective.Our research can provide a new perspective for the pragmatic and cognitivestudies of English zeugma and conduct a relative comprehensive and full-roundanalysis of this unique linguistic phenomenon with a view to probing into cognitivemechanisms of zeugma. This thesis is to be divided into five chapters.Chapter one provides a general introduction to the background, purpose,significance and the framework of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review. Previous studies from different perspectiveson English zeugma at home and abroad are reviewed in this chapter and the gaps arefound in the previous researches.Chapter Three presents a cognitive approach which combines lexical coercionwith the Cognitive Reference Point theory. Zeugma is not only a kind of rhetoricaldevice, but also a human cognitive way, which accords with basic human’s cognitivelaw from the known to the unknown, and from the concrete to the abstract. Therefore,based on the complementariness of the two theories, we can get a more satisfied andcomprehensive explanation of zeugma expressions.Chapter Four mainly deals with specific examples of zeugma expressions basedon those two cognitive theories, aiming to find the semantic, syntactic features andpragmatic effects of English zeugma. We firstly apply the Reference Point theory toanalysis the syntactic features. And then we extend our theory to a cognitive model in interpreting English zeugma’s semantic features. Finally based on previous research,the pragmatic effects are just in front of us. Besides, this study will make clear aboutthe similarities and differences between English zeugma and Chinese zeugma. Thisthesis concludes that Chinese zeugma is quite similar to English zeugma for theiressences are the same. Therefore, future studies can apply the same cognitivemechanism to analysis Chinese zeugma to have a better understanding and extend thescope of the cognitive theories. Finally, Chapter Five is a summary which sums up themain findings, points out the limitations of the study and states the suggestions for thefurther research.