A Cognitive Interpretation Of English Neologism From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Lexicon as the most active part of the language has the characters of openness and flexibility, and develops more rapidly than any other aspects of language. The constant emergency of neologism attributes most to the lexical change and attracts a great deal of attention from linguists at home and abroad, educationalists, word lovers and net friends.Based on the Conceptual Integration Theory, this thesis adopts the methods of description and interpretation and collects the data from English neologism website Wordspy from2010to2014. To avoid repeatability, the neologisms formed by derivating, compounding and category extending are objects of this thesis to explore the online meaning construction and semantic integration process of English neologisms from cognitive-pragmatic approach.Neologism is a continuum from nonce word to lexicalized word whose meaning varies according to cognitive context; and the blended space is exactly the temporary structure of online meaning construction which can explain the process of neologisms meaning construction. It is concluded that the meaning construction of these three kinds of neologisms involve four conceptual integration networks (simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network), which are associated and connected, and form a continuum. One end of the continuum is the simplex network, while on the opposite end involves the double-scope network which can be achieved by projection mapping or pragmatic function mapping. While the generation of new meaning mainly involves the more creative and complex double-scope network. The new meanings of these three types of neologisms emerge from blended space, which inherits the partial structure of the two input spaces and generic space, and also has the emergent structure (new meaning) generated in three operations:composition, completion and elaboration.Neologism research can demonstrate the flexibility, adaptability and richness of language, and reveal the trend of language development. This thesis enriches the study of neologism from the cognitive-pragmatic perspective and further certifies the great explanatory power of Conceptual Integration Theory.