Study On Polysemy In Business English Lexis

In Business English, there exist some polysemants with both general and business meanings, which are one of the problems in the learning of Business English lexis. In cognitive linguistics, all the meanings of each polysemant form a semantic category surrounding a prototype, from which derive other meanings through metaphor and metonymy.Based on the information of etymology, according to the theories of category, metaphor, metonymy and image schema, the thesis analyzes meaning variation of business polysemants from general meanings to business meanings. After selecting and analyzing the exemplary words of noun, verb and adjective which are important to constitute sentences, and the frequently used preposition, the thesis manages to provide a detailed discussion on the relations between general meanings and business ones, the process of meaning variation and the result of such variation. From the discussion, the thesis tries to indicate the principle of variation from exiting meanings to new ones. The study finds that with the development of economy, the occurrence of new concepts needs new words to express. Except for a few completely invented technical words, most new words are derived business meanings from the existed words. The analysis on meaning relations and variation process of the selected exemplary words indicates that business meanings are derived from the existed general meanings through the cognitive approaches of metaphor and metonymy; business meanings are generally far from the primary meaning in semantic relation and not easy to find their relations, but are close to the members of the same subcategory; the whole semantic category of a given Business English polysemant obtains the family resemblance.Finally the thesis suggests that learners of Business English should pay due attention to the collocation and synonyms of each meaning in order to master it and its usage. It also emphasizes that business meanings not only exist in dictionaries but most importantly rely on the context, the acquisition of the business meanings should be based on the comprehension of their specific contexts.