A Study Of Conceptualization Of Chinese Orientational Idioms

Since orientation has a close relationship with people's life,it has aroused many scholars' attention.However,many scholars pay attention to the study of localizers and few scholars have made a research of the systematic analysis of Chinese four-character orientational idioms,especially from the cognitive perspective.Thus,the author analyzes the process of conceptualization of Chinese four-character orientational idioms by constructing a new cognitive model.The thesis constructs a new CMCB model by integrating “Construal”,“Conceptual Metaphor Theory”,“Conceptual Metonymy Theory” and “Conceptual Blending Theory”.What is more,based on the principle “Reality-Cognition-Language”,the cognition of orientation is conducive to the conceptualization of Chinese four-character orientational idioms.The thesis applies the quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze Chinese four-character orientational idioms.And also,the corpora of 324 in total are collected from Xin Hua Cheng Yu Da Ci Dian(2013).After this,these idioms are classified into two types based on the spatial relations embodied in these idioms.In other words,they are divided into concrete space and abstract space.The process of conceptualization of Chinese four-character orientational idioms involving basic orientation “dong”,“xi”,“nan”,“bei”,“qian”,“hou”,“zuo”,“you”,“shang” and “xia” are analyzed based on CMCB model.The theoretical value lies in the application of a new cognitive model to analyze the process of conceptualization.The practical value lies in the interpretation of these idioms and the benefits to foreign teaching and students.The thesis is made up of five parts.Chapter one is the introduction of rationale of the study,the objective,methodology and the layout of the thesis.Chapter two is the relative literature review.Chapter three is the introduction of the theories and the construction of these theories to form a new CMCB model.Chapter four is the systematic analysis of the concrete spatial relations and abstract spatial relations embodied in the idioms and their mutual projection.Chapter five is the conclusion which is involved with major findings,significance,limitations and suggestions.