A Cognitive Semantic Approach To Chinese Political Neologisms

Of the language system, lexicon is the most sensitive to the change and development of culture and economy in the society. Neologisms are coined in large numbers as a result of the information dissemination from mass media. Chinese political neologisms have experienced a upsurge since 1980 s, when the government entered a new stage after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee.Though the previous research in neologism has brought us lots of valuable outcomes, little attention was attached to new political words and expressions. Moreover, few scholars analyze the meaning construction of lexicon in light of the Conceptual Blending Theory.The thesis first examine the distinguished features of Chinese political neologisms, followed by an analysis of the interpretation processes of Chinese political neologisms in view of conceptual blending theory to reveal their cognitive mechanism in light with their features. Then we discuss the affects which are yielded by this features of Chinese political neologisms, how non-linguistic factors pertain to the semantic construction of Chinese political neologisms, and expound the cognitive features of Chinese political neologisms.The major findings of this thesis lie in the following three points: first, Chinese political neologisms have many distinguished features. We found that words with affixes, abbreviations, words of four Chinese characters, folk adages, Chinese idioms and political terms are used quite frequently. Chinese political neologisms have the features of application and they change over time. Second, the conceptual blending theory has strong explanatory power in the analysis of neologisms of politics, especially in words with affixes, the shortened words, and words of four Chinese characters. The mapping models can effectively explain the on-line processes of the meanings of Chinese political neologisms. Third, we also try to account for how non-linguistic factors pertain to the semantic construction of Chinese political neologisms.