| English, as is known, is a typical alphabetic language. Hence, it is not exaggerated to say that without letters, there is no English. Nevertheless, most linguists contend that although all languages have originated from pictographic scripts at the very beginning, the original meanings of the alphabet have been completely lost along the history of evolvement, which leaves the letters nothing but the mere mission of working as the smallest units recording spelling and pronunciation.Besides being pure phonogram, morphemes are often regarded as the smallest semantic units. In order to discover another feature of English language hidden under its phonetic cover, the author attempts to explore the following three questions. Have the original meanings of English letters been completely lost during the long course of language development? Is it acceptable to say that the ideographic function of English alphabet is still exerting great influence on the current English vocabulary? Is it acceptable to claim that its ideographic function could reflect Westerners’ typical thinking tendencies? To provide possible answers to those three questions, this study mainly adopted literature research method by scrutinizing numerous classic books and essays as main sources.As for the first two questions, the author offers a detailed description of how English alphabet came into existence, evolved in shape and spreaded. The study not only explicitly elaborated on the original meanings of each letter, but also offered plenty of exemplified words, showing that the ideographic function of letters, instead of having been totally lost, is still dominating the meaning tendencies of numerous current words with the help of initial letters of corresponding words in most cases.In order to provide possible answers to the third question mentioned above, the alphabetic system is regarded as a metaphorical miniature universe, a universe mirroring the history, geography, social phenomenon as well the abstract world of the Westerners. The word Westerners here refers to the peoples using alphabetic scripts (English as representative) and claim intellectual inheritance mainly from ancient Greece and Rome. Based on this miniature cosmos, the study systematically analyzed the preferred ways the Westerners choose to respond to what is happening in real world, namely the preferred ways of understanding the world, surviving the world, self-accomplishment and social interaction.So the novelty of this study resides in the combination of letters’ ideographic function with Westerners’ typical thinking tendencies. To sum up, this study has found out that the semantic analysis of English language could be extended to the alphabetic level since its phonetic and ideographic function do not necessarily contradict with each other. Moreover, alphabet, like other human institutions, could reflect the characteristics of peoples using them. To be specific, the original meanings of letters, though experienced incredibly long history of evolvement, continue their unconscious existence beneath the way in which Westerners think and talk.This study is of importance. Theoretically, it is aimed at enriching the studies on the ideographic function of alphabet. Practically, it is intended to provide some useful implications regarding vocabulary acquisition and cross-cultural communication for both English language teachers and students. But there is still some room left for further improvement in future studies. |
