A Study On The Meaning Construction Of Chinese Internet Catchwords From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Internet catchwords are created by Internet users under the network environment.As a dynamically developing language variant,Internet catchwords have been the mark of the times and reflect the politics,economy,culture and people's life in a certain period.With the development of technology and the popularization of the Internet,the using scope of Internet catchwords has been constantly expanded.Now the Internet catchwords are not only used for network communication,but also widely used in the real-life communication.And its influence has been continuously improved.Therefore,the understanding of the meaning of Internet catchwords is very important.Currently,the researches mainly focus on semantics,pragmatics,syntax,translation,culture,sociolinguistics and cognitive linguistics which analyze the Internet catchwords' characteristics,cause,effect,translation strategy and so on.From the perspective of cognitive linguistics,there are few researches on the meaning construction of Chinese Internet catchwords based on the conceptual integration theory.Most of them focus on the analysis of certain types of Internet catchwords or they only analyze several individual cases.This thesis is based on the conceptual integration theory in cognitive linguistics,and the qualitative analysis method is used to analyze the process of meaning construction of Chinese Internet catchwords with high popularity in the past ten years.According to the types of conceptual integration network,the Internet catchwords are divided into four types: Internet catchwords of simplex network,Internet catchwords of mirror network,Internet catchwords of single-scope network and the Internet catchwords of double-scope network.Then according to the theory,the conceptual integration network model is built by the author and the typical Internet catchwords of these four types are selected for detailed analysis.First,the author analyzes the background knowledge.Through the analysis of background knowledge people can understand the original meaning of Internet catchword and the information of its new usage.Then through composition,completion and elaboration,the original meaning of Internet catchword and the information of its new usage are integrated to generatethe new meaning.At last,the governing principles involved in the process of integration are analyzed,such as the compression principle and web principle.Compression principle compresses the important elements and relationships that facilitate the understanding of new meaning into the conceptual integration network.Maximization of vital relations principle and intensification of vital relations principle ensure that as many important relationships as possible are displayed in the input spaces.Under the web principle,unpacking principle and relevance principle,the emergent structure generated in the blending space maintains the proper connection with the other three spaces so that the entire network can operate normally.This research shows that the conceptual integration theory can reveal the process of meaning construction of Internet catchwords.First,the background information and governing principles play an important role in the meaning construction of the Internet catchwords.Through the background information and the original cognition in people's mind,they can understand the original meaning of the Internet catchwords.With the new background information,they can know the new usage of the Internet catchwords and then they are able to integrate the representational things.Then its new meaning is generated under the governing principle,like the principle of compression.Second,the two input spaces of the Internet catchwords store the original meaning and their new usage respectively.The generic space reflects its common and abstract information.The elements of the two input spaces are projected into the blending space selectively.The new meaning generates through the composition,completion and elaboration.Third,the four-space network models established by the author under the governing principles conform to the requirements of conceptual integration theory and generate new meaning of Internet catchwords.In this thesis,the process of meaning construction of Chinese Internet catchwords is analyzed from the perspective of conceptual integration theory.It believes that there is a connection between the original meaning and the new usage of Internet catchwords.It emphasizes the understanding of new words which is generated from the original cognition and background knowledge in people's brain.This is more useful to people's understanding of the new meaning of Internetcatchwords.In addition,the conceptual integration network model created by the author can help people to intuitively recognize how the new meaning of Internet catchwords are generated through composition,completion and elaboration.This thesis expands the research perspective of Internet catchwords,enriches the explanatory power of the conceptual integration theory,and can help people to understand Internet catchwords correctly.