A Cognitive Study Of News Event-based Catchwords From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

With the rapid development of information technology and the reinforcement of economic globalization, China, in the 21st century, has already made a full-scale stride leap into the Internet era. Being an indispensable part of people’s daily life, internet not only serves as the direct platform for people to focus their attentions on hot issues, but also acts as a mirror to reflect social condition. Consistent with the development of times, the boom of network catchwords not only has enriched network language storage, but also makes it convenient for the users to express themselves. What’s more, it may also cast a tremendous influence on the mainstream media and even the entire Chinese system. Being a branch of the whole network catchwords, news events-based catchwords more directly reflect the concerns that netizens have shown to certain hot news events. Besides, this specific kind entails an abundance of personal feelings, ranging from critics to ridicule, or even spoofs, all of which have perfectly embodied people’s cognitive ability and mighty creativity.Due to the increasing popularity of network catchwords in recent years, the research on network catchwords has become the focus of many linguists. However, a large number of existing researches on network catchwords are mainly limited to descriptive analysis, concentrating on the aspects of phonetics, vocabulary, syntax and rhetorical features. While the researches from cognitive perspective, or the study on semantics construction, pragmatics, social influence and propagation regulation are very few. In addition, most researches regard the network catchwords overall as the subject, thus leaving a lack of researches on specific branches, namely news events-based catchwords. Being the direct reflection of public’s attention and thought on social livelihood, news event-based catchwords are bound to demonstrate the cognitive rules which plays on the meaning construction and comprehension. Therefore, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the thesis makes a thorough analysis on the news-event based catchwords in the framework of conceptual integration theory in order to reveal the generation mechanism of this kind of network catchwords and in turn, to show the strong explanatory power of conceptual integration theory.Conceptual integration theory, being one of the core achievements of cognitive linguistics, plays a vital role in the human universal cognitive process of language. Conceptual blending theory, proposed by Fauconnier and Turner and other linguists on the basis of mental space theory, is a theory whose theoretical structure and operation mechanism are maturely developed. The theory focuses on illustrating the processes involved in meaning construction. The part of the theory is conceptual integration networks which establishes distinct integration models according to different types of network catchwords.The core part of the paper will be concentrate on an in-depth investigation of news event-based catchwords under the theoretical frame of conceptual integration theory so as to figure out the meaning construction mechanism of this kind of catchwords. The basic thinking of this text is as follows:Firstly, the cognitive steps of network catchwords are discussed in the framework of CIT. Secondly, news event-based catchwords are classified into three categories respectively based on their contents and ways of formation. Then the network model of meaning construction has been applied to each categories to testify the explanatory power of CIT. Thirdly, the four basic integration networks:simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks and double-scope networks are linked to certain typical news event-based catchwords to reveal the cognitive process hidden behind, which provides supportive guidance and expectations to this class of network catchwords.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter makes a general introduction of the research background, research objects and the significance of the study. Moreover, the structure of thesis is briefly introduced. Chapter two gives a detailed account of the previous researches on the network catchwords both domestically and overseas, in which the definition and the classification of network catchwords are paid due attention. Chapter three reviews the related theoretical framework. Some core theories and technical terms have been illustrated as well. Chapter four focuses on the dynamic meaning construction process of network catchwords under the frame of conceptual integration theory. A considerable number of cases are studied according to different classifications of news event-based catchwords. Besides, four basic types of integration networks are applied to a further investigation into the cognitive models in the meaning construction process. Chapter five is the conclusion part in which the author summarizes the major findings of the study. Meanwhile, the limitations and how to modify and improve are objectively pointed out.