The Metonymic Origin Of MENG Phenomenon

Originating from Japan, meng is a netspeak which started gaining popularity among public in 2009, became on everyone's lips in 2010, and still prevails now. Whaf s more, the popularity of the word has even stimulated the business owners to take advantage of the concept to attract customers. How is this MENG phenomenon possible? Does it have anything to do with conceptual metonymy? Based on more than 20,000 authentic items of data collected from Sina Weibo, this study attempts to address these questions. According to the differences of collocation, these data are classified into seven groups and then investigated in detail.The thesis finds that MENG is popular because:Lexically, netizens do not confine themselves to using the word meng as its Japanese meaning "to love". It can be transferred into many other word classes with different meanings. For example, through EFFECT FOR CAUSE metonymy, it obtains its meaning as "lovely" which is the most well-known sense for the public. Besides, via the effect of both metonymy and Construction Coercion effect, meng can be used as a verb which means "to produce some effect on others with something adorable". The variety of the word classes enables netizens to use the word extensively.Pragmatically, MENG does not simply equal LOVELY. Since the vogue of the collocations like "??(stupid-lovely/loveliness) ", "??(warm-lovely/loveliness) ", "??(silly-lovely/loveliness)" and so forth, MENG has built a contiguous relation with the concepts like STUPID, WARM, SILLY and so on. As a result, with the "figure/ ground" effect, under some context, when the speaker says someone is "stupid", his intended meaning is "lovely". Besides, the verb meng provides an action schema where netizens can shift their attention within the frame freely and hence a lot more expressions are produced. There are diverse ways to express their feelings.Lastly, from the perspective of social culture, the success of MENG is based on the overwhehning metonymy that functions actively in our conceptual system:THE FACE FOR THE PERSON, or THE APPEARANCE FOR THE PERSON. Our love to the adorable object is in concord with our intense attention to FACE, BEAUTY or APPEARANCE. We love MENG because we naturally and metonymically concerns about BEAUTY and APPEARANCE.in summary, the little catchword meng can bring a notable phenomenon because via metonymy the netizens can find adequate space to express their feelings in both the lexical and concept levels. Also, the inclination toward MENG confirms our nature of loving BEAUTY. Metonymy indeed has made a contribution in this phenomenon.