A Cognitive Approach To Forbidden Expressions In News Reports Based On SPC Model

Language is an instrument for human beings to communicate and plays an important role in promoting the development of human society.With the development of society and the progress of the times,some vulgar and uncivilized words,swear words,incorrect expressions,and expressions that are not in line with the facts have emerged.These expressions affect the normative nature of language,especially the language of news reports,which has a great impact on society,and if they are used improperly,it will have a huge negative impact.As the national news agency of China and the statutory news regulator,Xinhua News Agency has the right and responsibility to regulate the language of its news reports.To maintain the authority of Xinhua News Agency in news reports and the purification of language,Xinhua News Agency has published some expressions that are banned in news reports,which has received a lot of attention recently.However,banned words do not appear out of thin air,and there are bound to be internal reasons for prohibiting them from being used.Therefore,it is necessary to analyze the cognitive mechanisms of forbidden expressions and discover why they are banned in news reports.Forbidden expressions in this paper refer to words prohibited using in news reports by Xinhua News Agency.The author firstly collected seven types of social life forbidden expressions,which contain 77 expressions in total,and then analyzed them according to the classification of Xinhua News Agency,found that they are not politically correct language.To study the cognitive mechanisms of these forbidden expressions,in the framework of cognitive linguistics,the author attempts to integrate cognitive reference point,perspective and social power to establish an SPC model(S stands for social power,P refers to perspective,and C is cognitive reference point).This model is used as the theoretical framework to analyze 77 social life forbidden expressions,which are published by Xinhua News Agency,combining qualitative analysis method and quantitative analysis method to analyze their processes of being cognized and considered to be politically incorrect.In the process of cognizing forbidden expressions,conceptualizer will choose one peculiar concept as a reference point to reach the target,at the same time,choose one certain perspective to construe the entity.The diverse choices of cognitive reference points and perspectives result in the target with various features,which are whether positive or negative,offensive or non-offensive,polite or impolite,and civilized or uncivilized,and so forth.Therefore,various language expressions are produced in verbalization.PC language contains two types of expression,one is politically correct and the other is politically incorrect,and under the influence of social power,politically correct expressions are norms and can be used in news reports,while incorrect ones are forbidden expressions,which can't be used in news reports.This paper finds that:(1)cognitive reference point and perspective provide cognitive pathway and angle for conceptualizer to have a better understanding of the cognitive process of forbidden expressions,making standard language use more reasonable and acceptable;(2)PC language is the theoretical standards for stipulating forbidden expressions;(3)social power,including language power,promotes the process of standard language use in news reports.