A Cognitive Study Of Metonymy In Chinese Event-Based Netspeak

The convenience and transparency of the internet make Chinese netspeak quickly become a popular linguistic phenomenon which loyally records the real world as well as populace psychology. Since Chinese netspeak made their advent on the internet, they have attracted many scholars’ attention and gained multi-dimensional views in research, of which there is explanation of Chinese netspeak using memes under the framework of biology, or concentration on social changes reflected by Chinese netspeak, or demonstration of culture vicissitudes behind Chinese netspeak. Although much research has been done, Chinese netspeak widely spread in the earlier time like "Ou(偶)”and "GG" are no more than a word game at phonological level.In recent days, Chinese event-based netspeak, with its reflection of current news events and strong applicability to other events in the same category, has attracted more and more attention from the public."Guomeimei(郭美美)”,"Xiaoyueyue(小悦悦)”,"my father is Ligang(我爸是李刚)”and "whether you believe it or not, I believe(不管你信不信,我反正信了)”,the mentioned netspeak all come from concrete events and then become abstract symbols of certain ideology during their transmission. The creation and transmission of Chinese event-based netspeak actually consist of double metonymical processes, which bear some similarities with mechanism of Chinese allusion-based idioms, so the cognitive mechanism of Chinese event-based netspeak and its research value proved by Chinese allusion-based idioms are two important issues waiting to be solved in this thesis.The above two problems will be solved within the framework of Lakoff’s (1987) idealized cognitive model (ICM). Moreover, Radden and Kovecses (1999) once mentioned six typical ICMs in which metonymy is produced, of which the event ICM as well as category-and-property ICM will be used respectively to explain the creation and transmission of Chinese event-based netspeak. Taking "My father is Ligang(我爸是李刚)”for example, it comes from a drunk-driving car accident and then becomes a symbol indicating bureaucracy-oriented culture. It is concluded that the key to interpret this piece of event-based netspeak is understanding of the name "Ligang", while in another piece of netspeak "whether you believe it or not, I believe(不管你信不信,我反正信了)”,the focus of comprehension should drop on understanding respective identification of "you" and "I". Thus it could be said that in Chinese event-based netspeak, the metonymy in lexical level promotes metonymy in event level.New points of this thesis are as following:one is analysis of cognitive mechanism of Chinese event-based netspeak within the framework of idealized cognitive model (ICM); the other is exploration of research value of Chinese event-based netspeak when making comparison with Chinese allusion-based idioms.After all, Chinese event-based netspeak is a new linguistic phenomenon, so the data collected may not be sufficient enough to provide valid support of author’s research result. Besides, the exploration to Chinese allusion-based idioms is confined to its support to research value of Chinese event-based netspeak. Now that they two bear a lot in common, more efforts will be spent on further illustrating cognitive mechanism of Chinese event-based netspeak with help of Chinese allusion-based idioms in future study.