Realization Of Figure-Ground In Tang Poems And Its Effect On Artistic Conception

Every perception domain is composed of figure and ground. The part we perceived is conceptualized as"figure", meanwhile the ignored rest as"ground". This phenomenon is termed as figure-ground segregation. People can't perceive figure and ground at the same time. This is our basic perceptual phenomenon. This principle of figure-ground segregation is one of the basic cognitive principles according to which space is organized. It originates from psychology. But later cognitive linguists apply it to the research of language organization, especially localizers. It thus becomes a basic cognitive principle by which language organizes its concepts.Now cognitive linguistics combined with literature studies becomes an interpretation tool for literature works, ie cognitive poetics. Some foreign scholars such as Stockwell, Tsur have made lots of contribution to this field. They employ figure-ground principle to analyze literature works. They pay more attention to the readers'cognitive system functioning in the process of understanding literature text and get that figure-ground principle becomes the basic feature of literary stylistic analysis. The paper introduces the development of cognitive science especially the principle of figure and ground and some important conceptions like image and artistic conception which are related to Chinese poetry. It also reviews the application of figure-ground on Chinese and English corpora. But it shows that it is rare to analyze Chinese classical art from cognitive perspective.This paper applies this basic cognitive principle to the research of literary works, especially the artistic conception of Tang poems and employs Three Hundred Tang Poems compiled by HengTang TuiShi as the research text. The paper employs substitution function of Microsoft word to count the number of localizers. The paper analyzes the embodiment of figure-ground relation in topological and projective orientation space. This paper explores the other methods to reflect the relationship: using verbs, adjectives and paratactic images to reflect and the relation's effect on artistic conception through manual reading and analysis. The spatial relation of figure and ground can extend to the temporal structure. The paper also analyzes the embodiment of figure-ground relation on the structure of temporal events in language through some localizers. This paper provides a new perspective from cognitive linguistics to the research and understanding of Chinese poems and lyrics.