A Cognitive Analysis Of Lexical Meanings In Australian English

Having developed from the eighteenth-century British English and borrowed a largenumber of words from Aboriginal languages, American English and other immigrantlanguages, Australian English is a diversified language and an important regional variety ofBritish English. British English has undergone a great change since it left its motherland andcame to Australia, a country totally different from Britain in the natural environment andsocial culture. Large quantities of new words and new lexical meanings have sprung up,which show the natural environment and social culture that are unique to Australia. Somestudies of Australian English lexicon have been conducted and most of them focus mainly onsocial and cultural factors, while little attention is paid to the cognitive study of AustralianEnglish lexicon. Therefore, the present study is carried out in terms of the lexical meanings inAustralian English and aims to investigate the cognitive mechanisms in the meaningconstruction. The linguistic data in this thesis come from Macquarie English-ChineseBilingual Dictionary(1999) and Yao Jianpeng’s book on Australian English Lexicon(2009),including words related to convicts, sheep, gold mining as well as animals and plants, andthese words are closely connected with social culture and daily life in Australia. By theanalysis of the data, the study finds that the production of existing words with new meaningsand coined words has a lot to do with metaphorical thinking and metonymic thinking. Lexicalmeanings have been extended through metaphor, metonymy or the interaction betweenmetaphor and metonymy. The coined words like compounds, which are used to nameAustralian animals and plants, are formed by combining concepts from the same or differentcategory levels. Some are simple combinations of concepts while others are combinations ofconcepts in which metaphorical or metonymic components are involved. This study helps toenhance our understanding of Australian English lexicon, and thus it paves a way forimproving our knowledge of Australian history and culture, interpreting Australian literatureas well as promoting cross-cultural communication.