The Cognitive Study Of Taijiquan Posture Names From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Taijiquan is one of the most important parts of Chinese traditional martial arts.In recent years,due to its profound cultural connotation,good fitness effect and practical fighting skills,Taijiquan has gotten close attention and wide spread at home and abroad.In virtue of absorbing the essence of Chinese traditional culture,Taijiquan posture names not only describe the actions of Taijiquan vividly,but also present some unique characteristics,such as the use of simple and neat words,the lofty artistic conception,the implicit and abstract nature,and the harmonious thinking,which are in deep contrast with the direct and accurate feature of action names in the western sports.Moreover,an in-depth study of Taijiquan posture names can deepen the understanding of Taijiquan among practitioners,and help people grasp the postures more quickly and correctly,thus contributing to the inheritance and development of Taijiquan.Therefore,this study chooses Taijiquan posture names as the research object to expound their processes of meaning construction and the cognitive features of their integration processes.At present,the studies for Taijiquan posture names are relatively rare,and most of them concentrate on their origins,standardization,translation strategies and cultural meanings,and so on.In addition,some scholars set foot in the field of traditional linguistics and rhetoric which emphasize the rhetorical and aesthetic effect of Taijiquan posture names.But,these approaches are employed to pay closer attention to their static model,and few of them touch upon the on-line meaning construction process and dynamic cognitive mechanism of these posture names.As a major breakthrough in cognitive linguistics,Conceptual Integration Theory put forward by Turner and Fauconnier,points out that in the process of its operation,four mental spaces are involved,namely two inputs,one generic space and one blended space.The elements from the two input spaces are selectively projected into blended space.Immediately following,an emergent structure with novel structures and meanings comes into being through three different but interacted processes of composition,completion and elaboration.Conceptual Integration Theory aims to uncover the on-line meaning construction of language expressions and phenomenons,which can be precisely applied to conduct a thorough and careful analysis on the meaning construction processes of Taijiquan posture names.In order to achieve the aims of this study,two research questions are put forward through investigation: What is the meaning construction process of Taijiquan posture names? What are the cognitive features in the process of meaning construction? The author mainly adopts a combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,and chooses 107 Taijiquan posture names from two classics Encyclopedia of Taijiquan and A Series of Taijiquan Competition Training Guidebook to expound the meaning construction of Taijiquan posture names under the different conceptual integration networks.Through detailed analysis,this thesis indicates that all the five network types can make an in-depth illustration of different Taijiquan posture names according to their own operation principles,and reveal their unconscious and dynamic conceptual integration in the process of on-line understanding.In the meanwhile,this thesis also points out two cognitive features of the meaning construction processes of Taijiquan posture names.One is that Taijiquan posture names whose meaning constructions are compatible with the single-scope network take the largest proportion,among which there exist a large number of metaphors of animals,metaphors of specific human forms or actions,and metaphors of natures.The other feature is that cognitive ability and background knowledge are the two indispensable factors in the meaning construction of Taijiquan posture names.All these findings further verify the feasibility of explaining the cognitive operation of Taijiquan posture names under the guidance of Conceptual Integration Theory,which offers a new angle and analytical approach to the investigation of Taijiquan posture names.In brief,this thesis seeks to carry on the beneficial study on Taijiquan posture names from the viewpoint of Conceptual Integration Theory.It attempts to uncover the meaning construction processes and their cognitive features of Taijiquan posture names in order that people can better understand posture names,thus promoting the spread and development of Taijiquan posture names.