A Study Of Prototype Effects In Xin Qiji's Song Lyrics From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

Categorization is one of the basic contents in cognitive linguistics.Faced with the colorful objective world,human beings tend to classify everything according to their distinguishing features and endow different objects with various marks.This mental process of classification is called categorization,which results in cognitive categories.Members with family resemblance can form a category(Zhao Yanfang 2001: 55).Category,therefore,is the foundation on which people understand and perceive the world.Prototype theory is a theory about category and categorization.With great explanatory power,it can be used to explain not only natural phenomena,but also social phenomena,including those in language.If people can categorize the world with language,then they can study language with the application of Prototype Theory.Xin Qiji's Song lyrics have been studied a lot by various scholars.Nevertheless,few attempts have been made from the perspective of Prototype Theory.This thesis is a try in this aspect.Different themes,unique writing styles and extraordinary artistic features embodied in Xin Qiji's Song lyrics can be seen as three distinctive language categories and they have their own prototype effects.Accordingly,the thesis is aimed to illustrate the prototype effects in Xin's literary works with the application of Prototype Theory,which can further promote the research on the classical Chinese poetry and shed new light on the research approaches.This thesis first introduces the background,the significance and its own structure.Then it reviews the previous researches on prototype theory and Xin Qiji's Song lyrics.Furthermore,three aspects of Xin Qiji's Song lyrics,namely themes,styles and artistic features,are studied bases upon prototype theory,which is helpful to a thorough understanding of Xin Qiji's Song lyrics.Finally,it draws a conclusion that the prototype effects do exist in Xin Qiji's Song Lyrics.To sum up,the purpose of cognitive poetics or cognitive linguistics lies in illuminating the interrelations between cognition and language use.Appreciating and analyzing Xin's Song lyrics under the guidance of Prototype Theory provides a practical platform for the application of the theory and open up a new trail for literary criticism.In short,this thesis proves an effort in the localization of Prototype Theory and an innovation in the studies of classical Chinese poetry.