Study Of The Colloquial Words In The Collection Of Chengzhai’s Poems

The Collection of Chengzhai’s Poems has collected the poems from Yang Wanli, who was an active litterateur during the Southern Song Dynasty. With over 4200 poems, the whole collection has 9 subdivisions:Jianghu (Volume No.1-No.7), Jinxi (Volume No.8-No.12), Xigui (Volume No.13-No.14), Nanhai (Volume No.15-No.18), Chaotian (Volume No.19 - No.24), Jiangxidaoyuan (Volume No.25 - No.26), Chaotian Ⅱ (Volume No.27-No.30), Jiangdong (Volume No.31-No.35), and Tuixiu (Volume No.36-No.42).Yang’s Poems are famous for freshness, naturalness, and unusual delight. He observed nature and learnt from it, combined the elegance with folk culture, and made the most of colloquial word vividly. This study mainly focuses on the colloquial words in the Collection of Chengzhai s Poems, which is divided into five parts.The first part discusses the definition of colloquial words, and the value, present situation, and method of the study.The second part divides the colloquial words in the poems into six varieties by appellation, actions, emotions and appearance, nouns, function words, and others. Meanwhile, the explanations of the six varieties are also presented.The third part expounds more specifically about eight complicated colloquial words: Di, Sheng, Lang, Xuan, Mengteng, Shengya, Geli, and Doulai.The fourth part probes into the culture behind the colloquial words from the food culture, festival and custom and interpersonal communications.The fifth part analyses the reason why Yang utilised large amount of colloquial words in his poems from four aspects:the expansion of writings in vernacular Chinese, the popularity of Zen with the development of social economy, the esteem of regarding folkways as another way of elegance in literature, and the needs of artistic creation.