Cognitive Interpretation In Concrete Poems

The concrete poem is a special type of poems. It expresses the image, motif and the inner emotions of the poet through some idiosyncratic techniques. However, people used to comprehend concrete poems from the traditional literary perspective, and the emphasis is mainly on the expressive techniques, the format of the poem and the creative background of the poem and so on. This perspective fails to explore the human cognitive process working in the processes of creating and interpreting the concrete poem, and leaves several problems unsolved such as: why the reader can grasp the motif of the concrete poem promptly and immediately; where dose the new meaning in the poem comes from and how it is successfully received by readers; and through what way the poet can express the imagery in his poem to the utmost. In a word, the analysis of concrete poems from the literary perspective ignores the cognitive motivation of the overwhelming rhetoric and aesthetic effects in concrete poems.With the development of cognitive linguistics, more and more cognitive linguistic theories have been applied in poem analysis. However, concrete poems analysis in China is more focusing on the introduction of foreign counterpart studies and the studies seldom use Chinese concrete poems as data. Iconicity has been applied in concrete poems most frequently, however, most of the studies cease in the imagic iconicity. The analysis of concrete poems is lack of an overall and systematic study about its origin of the aesthetic effect and cognitive mechanism in the process of conceptualization or comprehending.Based on the established theories in cognitive linguistics, this thesis attempts to construct the theoretical framework for the analysis of concrete poems from the cognitive linguistics perspective. We apply the theories of conceptual blending, metaphor and iconicity to systematic explore of the origin of the aesthetic effect and cognitive mechanism and offer a new perspective to comprehend concrete poems in the frame of cognitive linguistics. It will also be supportive to argue against the dominant view of language that sees the linguistic sign as primarily non-iconic arbitrary.