| Proverbs, as a bright pearl in a language, play a significant role in our daily life. English proverbs, in which a great deal of wisdom, truth, philosophy, values and experience are embodied, are an indispensable part of linguistic studies and western culture. Being such a significant linguistic and cultural phenomenon, English proverbs have attracted much attention of researchers both at home and abroad. However, most previous studies on English proverbs have been conducted from the perspectives of traditional linguistics such as their linguistic features, translations of English proverbs, and contrastive studies between English proverbs and Chinese ones. Fewer researchers have carried out studies on English proverbs from cognitive perspectives. Given this, the present study is an attempt to analyze English proverbs from a cognitive perspective, that of conceptual integration theory. By means of a CIT-based analysis of English proverbs, the explanatory power of conceptual integration theory may be proved as well. Moreover, the present study also aims to explore the blending process of comprehending English proverbs, the cognitive interpretation thereof and the cognitive mechanism for interpreting English proverbs.In this study, theoretical analysis and qualitative study are used as research methodology. Conceptual integration theory, as the theoretical basis for this study, is a significant cognitive theory and has aroused great interest among researchers in recent years. The theory was put forward by Fauconnier in 1997. Central to the theory are the four integration networks:single framing networks, frame networks, one-sided networks, and two-sided networks. In this thesis, the study is focused on analyzing the selected English proverbs from these four integration networks in order to reveal the cognitive mechanism of comprehending English proverbs. As to the proverbs analyzed in this thesis, they are selected from two books A Collection of English Proverbs by Chen Minghua (2007) and The Facts of File Dictionary of Proverbs by Martin H. Manser (2004). The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is an introductory part, in which the research context, the research questions, the significance and the structure of the study are presented. Chapter Two is a literature review of English proverbs, including various definitions of English proverbs and previous studies on English proverbs at home and abroad. Chapter Three is the methodology. Conceptual integration theory is discussed in detail in this chapter. Moreover, the four types of the integration networks and the network model are elaborated. Chapter Four is a detailed analysis of the selected English proverbs. On the basis of the previous studies on English proverbs and conceptual integration theory, the selected proverbs are analyzed in the frame of the four types of the conceptual integration networks. By means of analysis, the blending process for interpreting English proverbs is explicated clearly. At the same time, the explanatory power of conceptual integration theory is proved as well. Chapter Five is the conclusion part. Moreover, the implications, the limitations as well as the suggestions for further study are also discussed. |
