Understanding Of English Allusions From Cognitive Perspective

Allusions are a unique branch of language system that concentrates the distillate of culture which has been formed in the long history. The abundance of linguistic culture leads to diversifications in the contents and forms of allusions. This variety reflects such features of allusions as colloquialism, variability, refinement, artistry and nationality.Previous studies on allusions mainly focus on linguistic perspectives. Cognitive theories are rarely related to discussing English allusions. This research tries to study allusions from the perspective of cognitive semantics out of the consideration that cognitive linguistics is a newly rising discipline and will add new dimensions to the research of allusions.According to cognitive view, allusions are historical metaphors which describe the current affairs by referring to historical event. The comprehension of allusions is treated as a cognitive process which underlies but goes beyond the literal meaning. Therefore, it is difficult to understand the connotative meaning of allusions, especially for second/foreign language learners (SLL/FLL).To deal with such difficulty, this research discusses English allusions from cognitive perspective based on Attentional View of cognitive semantics and Fauconnier's blending theory (BT), aiming to find out the characteristic of allusion construction and the blending patterns of allusions.This research has surveyed 430 English allusions mainly from Li Xianshi's The Omnibus of Comparison between English Allusions and its Chinese Translation, Hua Quankun's A Dictionary of English Allusions and other sources. The research methods used in this study is a combination of deductive and inductive analysis coupled with cognitive explanation.Through an analysis of allusion construction, it is found that allusions are constructed by emphasizing one or more parts of an event such the participants, event itself, objects, scene, time or feature of them. Based on Fauconnier's Blending Theory, the blending patterns fall into four major blending networks: single framework, frame network, one sided networks and two-sided networks. As for individual allusion, their understanding processes present specific network. In addition, the understanding of allusions has close relationship with their contexts, which mainly include the linguistic context and extra-linguistic context, especially the context of culture.