| Conceptual Integration Theory belongs to cognitive linguistics,which has a great power in explanation.It can be adopted to the meaning construction to study the dynamic generation mechanism of words' meaning.The Conceptual Integration Theory,originally,was come up with by Fauconnier in his Mapping in Thought and Language in 1997.There are two basic theory have been set the foundation of CIT: the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Mental Space Theory.In the process of analyzing meaning construction,there are several operating modes involved: cross-mapping space,projection,input spaces,generic space,blended space,composition,completion,elaboration and emergent structure,which will be introduced respectively in this thesis.When the final structure-emergent structure is generated,this is the end of meaning construction.According to different types of expressions,their meanings will be constructed by different networks of CIT: simplex network,mirror network,single-scope network and double-scope network.By using these types of networks,the meanings of expressions will be analyzed deeply and the mental process of meaning construction will be shown clearly.Puns,as one of the rhetoric methods in English,which are popular in people's daily communication,and applied in other fields as well,such as the literature,humorous stories,talk show,and advertisement.There is a long history of puns' research,it mainly has been studied under the perspective of rhetoric,semantics and pragmatics,but rarely in the cognitive linguists.English puns has been studied in cognitive field,but there is just less study on the dynamic meaning construction process of puns,how does the mental process of pun-makers work while they are generating the puns and how the humorous effects are generated of puns.In this paper,based on the perspective of Cognitive Integration Theory,the puns in sitcom and advertisement will be analyzed deeply in the cognitive way to reveal the dynamic generation mechanisms of meaning construction and functions.This research adopts the Conceptual Integration Theory as the theoretical basis to study research questions: 1.How the humorous effects are generated during the dynamic meaning construction process of puns;2.How the three factors work in the meaning construction process;3.What are the functions of the English puns in two different contexts,in sitcom and advertisement.The objective of this study is to reveal the dynamic meaning construction process of English puns over the surface meaning and the functions of English puns.At the same time,this thesis aims to testify the great explanatory power of CIT and expand its application scope.In this thesis,the puns are classified into four groups: phonetic puns,semantic puns,grammatical puns and contextual puns,which will be analyzed in different networks.The data will be collected from the lines of target sitcom and amounts of the popular advertisements.In the process of data collection,the qualitative method is used to analyze the cases.After the detailed analysis of the cases,this study has drawn the following conclusions:(1)Why puns are used in communication: the very reason of puns appears in the communication is the pun makers' communication purpose.In order to reach the effect of using one stone shoots two birds,pun makers prefer to use the puns in their communication.On the one hand,the surface and implied meanings of puns can reach the communication point.On the other hand,besides the dual meanings of puns,the functions under the puns will work to fulfill the communication.All in all,these are to meet pun makers' intention,which is the reason why puns are produced in communication.(2)The dynamic mechanism of meaning construction of puns: in this meaning construction process,three factors of puns(trigger,hinge and double contexts)play the vital roles.What makes a pun generate,it is the original purpose of pun-maker or the trigger of the pun.It is the pun-makers' intention to stimulate the formation of generic space and build a proper expression which can connect the double contexts of the puns,and the proper expression here is called as the hinge of puns.There are two different frames according to the double contexts of puns,and the elements in the generic space with some related information of the two input spaces take the charge of the cross-space mapping between the two spaces.After the elements mapped with each other of the input spaces,there is a conversion between the double contexts.Then the elements and frames are selectively projected into a new space---the blended space,this process make the deep meanings of puns appear.At last a new structure called emergent structure is generated,after the composition,completion and elaboration.This is the whole process of dynamic generation of the puns.Besides,one point should be pointed the meaning construction of puns cannot be conducted by simplex network model.(3)The humor generation mechanism of puns: there will be many conflicts which are not logical for common sense between the elements,after the generation of emergent structure in the blended space.With the related background information and contexts of the puns,the conflicts will be solved in the blended space by people;at last the humorous effects are generated at the same time.(4)The functions of the puns in the two different contexts: Through the analysis of English puns under the Integration Conceptual Theory,the real meanings of puns will be generated in the blended space in receivers' mind.Then the implied meanings will be got by receivers,that is to say the real function of the puns is achieved.And this is exactly meeting the original purpose of using puns.There are five functions have been found in total,the humorous,sarcastic,persuasive,economic and aesthetic functions.The former two functions act more contributive than the later three in sitcom,the persuasive function is found more frequently in the advertisement,and the later two are the common functions which exist in most of puns.The limitations still exits in this thesis.First of all,all the working principles of CIT could not be understood at one time.Secondly,in fact,the multiple network is not discussed in this thesis,as it is complicated to analyze the puns.Thirdly,the number and the type of data are limited.The type of data is only from the punning lines of sitcom and advertisement.The number of the cases analyzed in the thesis is limited,not all of them have been studied deeply because of the limited space and time.Last but not least,although CIT has been proved to have great explanatory power,it is still not accurate to analyze all kinds of language phenomenon and it needs to be modified in the future.To sum up,the thesis still has limitations concerning its depth and width. |
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