A Study Of Proper Names From The Perspective Of Cultural Cognition

Analytic Philosophy witnessed the dispute over proper names between Descriptivist theories and Causal theories. The former emphasizes the cognitive state of proper names, while the later focuses on the social aspects of them. There are also complementary approaches toward name issues, trying to integrate Descriptivist theories and Causal theories in different ways. However, they do not have systemic and balanced touch on the relationship between cognition and society.Post-analytic Philosophy for China advocates relating linguistics problems in Analytic Philosophy with reality, human behavior, social communication and life. The thesis agrees with this complementary approach, because it accords with the actual use of proper names. However, in order to thoroughly bring proper name studies back to reality and to systemically balance the cognitive and social aspects in proper names, we have to extend the social dimension to cultural dimension and build up a new linguistic world vie. Based on this, our research question is how the interdependent relationship between cognition and culture influence the everyday use of proper names.The present thesis tires to integrate the discussions on cognition and culture in such fields as cognitive cultural studies, cultural linguistics under the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. In so doing, it concludes that culture is the house for “Reality – Cognition – Language”. From this linguistic world view, the relationship between cognition and culture is represented as Sharifian’s cultural cognition which is complex adaptive system belonging to specific cultural groups.The thesis has the following major findings:(1) Such universal cognitive mechanisms as metonymy, metaphor in naming are ruled by culture. Firstly, the part-whole choice is ruled by culture. Secondly, reality is created by human’s cultural cognition; therefore, metonymy also occurs in empty names. Thirdly, different cultures conceptualize a same name-bearer differently and thus have different or even contradictory descriptions. Finally, metonymical models, say, Paragon, are also culturally based.(2) Cultural cognition can provide coherent explanation for the reference transfer and meaning change of proper names, for they both are dynamic and adaptive phenomenon in cultural cognition. On the reference hand, individual both influence and comply with the group’s reference. On the meaning hand, only conceptualized proper names have meaning. Conceptualized proper names belong to specific cultural group and meanwhile influenced by individual cognition.