| As a rhetorical device of transnormal collocation and a phenomenon of linguistic deviation, transferred epithet refers to the transference of the modifier from the appropriate noun to another to which it does not really belong. It is widely used, not only in literary works, but also in daily expressions. They are terse, vivid and impressive, achieving both efficiency and creativity. Most of the former studies of transferred epithet focus on its identification, classification, formation, aesthetic function, translation, etc, however, the cognitive process of its meaning construction has not been scientifically illustrated yet. The conceptual integration theory proposed and developed by Fauconnier (1997, 1998, 2002, 2006) and Turner (1998, 2006) offers a new perspective to the study of transferred epithet. It assumes that conceptual integration is a fundamental cognitive ability taking place at all levels of perception, of understanding, and of memory. It refers to a set of operations combining cognitive models in a network of mental spaces. It operates on two input mental spaces to yield a third space, the blend. The blend inherits partial structure from the input spaces and has emergent structure of its own. A central feature of integration networks is their ability to compress diffuse conceptual structures into intelligible and manipulatable human scale situations in a blended space, so it must be powerful in interpreting the meaning construction of transferred epithet, the modifier and the modified of which are illogically combined.Based on the former studies of transferred epithet and Fauconnier and Turner's conceptual integration theory, this dissertation adopts a cognitive semantic approach to the in-depth analysis of the on-line meaning construction of transferred epithet. It is carried out from two aspects: one is the cross-space mapping and the other is the compression of outer-space Vital Relations into inner-space Vital Relations through blending. The methodology adopted in this study is mainly introspection supported by some amount of language data.Through analysis, several conclusions are drawn as follows:Firstly, transferred epithet is not only a matter of words, but also thought and action. It is based on people's bodily experience in the world and is generated on the basis of association of contiguity. Human beings unconsciously associate the outside, concrete appearance or behaviors with abstract inaccessible feelings or characteristics to vividly and validly express a complicated personal sensation.Secondly, the on-line meaning construction of transferred epithet depends heavily on conceptual integration. To solve the conflict between the modifier and the modified in transferred epithet, people integrate the linguistic, contextual, and background knowledge to create cognitive models, find out the mappings between them and integrate them in a blended space. Besides that, outer-space Vital Relations are compressed into inner-space Vital Relations through blending to achieve global insight and human-scale understanding.Finally, conceptual integration theory is a powerful theory for meaning construction. The projection mapping and schematic mapping between mental spaces, the partial projection and the emergent structure in conceptual integration networks and the compression and creation of Vital Relations help to find out what is happening backstage and answer why such illogical combination does not prevent the listener or the reader from understanding the speaker'or the writer's intension.This study explores the meaning construction of transferred epithet from a new perspective. It can help the language learners have a better understanding of transferred epithets, and thus they can use and translate them proficiently. Besides that, it extends the study of conceptual integration to the field of transferred epithet, and thus in turn helps to prove the ubiquity and the explanatory power of this theory. |
