A Study Of Medical English Vocabulary From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Medicine is a discipline,which is closely related with human beings.While the huge numbers of medical English vocabulary with complicate structures have always been making people frustrated.Consequently,a lot of scholars have conducted researches on it.Most of the previous studies on medical English vocabulary are done from the perspectives of etymology and iconicity.While the studies carried on from the cognitive perspective are comparatively few.And the studies from the view of Conceptual Blending Theory are scarce.Therefore,this thesis attempts to apply Conceptual Blending Theory to interpret the cognitive meaning construction of medical English vocabulary.This thesis mainly analyzes medical English vocabulary in the collected data,i.e.,words created from affixation,compounding,abbreviation and meaning shift by way of conceptual blending networks in Conceptual Blending Theory.Through the research,the author finds that simplex network has great power in explaining the meaning construction of medical words created from affixation and abbreviation.Sing-scope network has great power in the meaning construction of medical words formed from meaning shift.By comparison,the meaning construction of medical words created from compounding is more complex as it involves simplex network,single-scope network and double-scope network.The application of Conceptual Blending Theory to interpret medical English vocabulary does not only widen the study scope of Conceptual Blending Theory,but also offer a new angle for the study of medical English vocabulary.Hopefully,this study will be helpful for learners who may have a better understanding of medical vocabulary and for those researchers who conduct the related studies concerning medical vocabulary.