A Cognitive Semantic Study On The Understanding Of Oxymoron

The word "oxymoron" was originated from ancient Greek, which means a juxtapositionof two words contradictory in meanings. It can yield profound philosophical effects. The termseems self-contradictory and illogical, yet it is just this contradiction that evokes people toreflect on its deeper implications, so as to achieve peculiar aesthetic effects. Oxymora areoften applied to reveal the contradiction in outside world and to depict the complex feelingsinside human heart.After a brief review of the former study on oxymoron, a conclusion is drawn that most ofthe researches concentrate on the rhetoric or pragmatic function of oxymoron rather than thecognitive process of uttering and understanding oxymoron. Therefore, based on theConceptual Integration Theory (CIT), this thesis aims at providing an analysis and illustrationon the on-line meaning construction process in understanding oxymoron from the cognitivesemantic point of view, and hopes to contribute to the current study of oxymora.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of oxymoron, including its etymology,definition and its psychological and philosophical foundations.The second chapter mainly presents a literature review on the researches of oxymoron,and explains the two ways of classification and its rhetoric and pragmatic effects.The third chapter distinguishes traditional semantics and cognitive semantics from theirphilosophical foundations, and the basic viewpoints of cognitive linguistics and cognitivesemantics are further elucidatedThe fourth chapter primarily offers a general illustration of Conceptual IntegrationTheory from the angles of the constitutive principles, types of integration networks,optimality principles, etc.The fifth chapter proposes a CIT-based interpretation in demonstrating the cognitiveprocess of understanding oxymoron. Meanwhile, several examples of oxymoron are appliedto further exemplify the interpretation.Finally the thesis concludes that CIT is very persuasive and powerful in explainingoxymoron. Moreover, context information also plays an important role in the process ofunderstanding.