Analysis On The Cognitive Motivation Of English Interjections

Interjections are long being defined by scholars as words that are used to imitate natural sounds and to express certain emotions and affections. It is regarded as an aspect of onomatopoeia. However, many subsequent researches have indicated that not all the reasons for the formation of interjections can be vaguely classified into the absolute imitation of natural sounds. Peanuts, as a long serialized American comics, was composed by Charles M. Schulz. There exist large numbers of English interjections whose word forms are various. Thus, through applying the theory of the bases for a motivational process and language-independent factors analyzed by Radden and Panther as well as relevant researches of the multimodal metaphor, the thesis attempts to choose the comics Peanuts as the breakthrough point in order to explore various explanations of the process of the formation of English interjections and to give a basic analysis on various manifestations of English interjections in the special style of comics. The thesis will regard the interaction between forms of English interjections and their corresponding contents as the main subject to be discussed. In addition, how language-independent factors play a role in the process of the formation of forms and contents will also be analyzed. It is found that the formation of English interjections can also rely on the following two factors in addition of the pure imitation of natural sounds: 1. The phonetic characters or the articulatory process of certain sound or monogram. 2. The cognitive mechanism, economic motivation and the cultural factor play a role in its forming process.Besides, the multimodal metaphor enriches the manifestations of English interjections in the style of comics. On one hand, the thesis means to enrich relevant researches on the cognitive motivation of the formation of English interjections and to deepen people’s understanding of the relationship among language, culture and thought. On the other hand,since the style of comics is known as a special carrier of meanings, the thesis will contribute to deepen readers’ furthur interpretations about the creative methods by which the contents of comics are being expressed. Meanwhile, it will also inspire second-language learners’ interests in applying the means of motivational analysis intoboth the understanding and the remembering of vocabularies.