A Comparative Textual Analysis Of Chang Gan Xing And Its Two Translation Versions From The Perspective Of Cognitive Semantics

Textual analysis has been paid great attention since it emerges. Seen from the material and literature collected, textual analysis not only lacks of official theory framework and basis, but also is short of analysis method and steps. From the superficial level, text is just a kind of words expression, but from the deep level, it is a reflection of inner mind activity. And poem is just a genre of this kind, with an old saying, “Poem, describes how the author feel at a certain situation, uses figurative language to reflect the flowing of inner emotions”. And cognitive linguistics study language from the perspective of mental, psychological experience of human beings in the real world, thus it can do analysis from a deeper level. And in this way, cognitive science may pose some light on textual analysis.Generally speaking, language can be divided into three stratifications: phonology, morphology and semantics. And it is semantics which occupies an important position. It is not only concerned with the meaning of words as lexical items, but also concerned with levels of language below the word and above it. In our real life, the understanding of a word is based on the context and our life experiences. And cognitive semantics is mainly concerned with semantics from the perspective of the relationship between language and mind, language and bodily experience, and language and the outside world. This thesis will mainly refer to an important figure's idea in cognitive semantics Leonard, Talmy's four schematic systems, namely configurational schematic system, perspectival schematic system, attentional schematic system and force- dynamic schematic system, as a framework to launch textual analysis. First of all, much attention will be paid on the analysis of language structure at the superordinate level, with the aim of determining the semantic and cognitive properties and functions of this structural component of language as a whole. And then these related factors will function as a standard, and a tentative polished translation version from the perspective of cognitive science will be put forward based on the former translation versions of the original text.Being a kind of social ideology, literature is one of the branches of social-science, locating above of the upper level of society coordinated with philosophy, religion, law, and politics. It originates in the thinking activities of human beings, figuratively reflecting object reality using words as a tool to express the inner world of the writer. Poetry is one of the earliest genres of literature. It has rhyme and can be sung by people. Poetry can be used to reflect people's life briefly and vividly, rich in imagination and emotion, having rhyme as music melody, so it is a wonderful and bright pearl in the hall of literature. As a literature genre with conciseness and rich connotation, Tang poetry gets to the summit of Chinese poetry, and is thus a lustrous and brilliant star among the world's literature treasure. With the frequent communication between Chinese and the outside world, textual analysis towards Tang poetry and its translations therefore becomes a major issue in linguistic field.Chang Gan Xing is a narrative poem of a famous Chinese Tang poet Li Bai, and wording in this poem is nearly perfect. It has inherited from Shi Jing's poetic style which describes common people's daily life. And from the data collected, the researches done about this poem before are mainly from the perspective of super-textualism, skopos theory and deconstructionalism. And this thesis will do the textual analysis from the perspective of cognitive semantics which is nearly none in the past.From the broad perspective, it can maximally reflect the enchantment of poetry in our country, and get foreigners have greater access to China and Chinese culture, which embraces the trend of this time and consistent with the great aim of improving cultural soft power; from the narrow perspective, it can further testify the possibility to do textual analysis from the perspective of cognitive semantics and thus inject fresh blood into textual analysis. At the same time, it can provide a new strategy to do translation. At last, a comparative text analysis of Chang Gan Xing and its two translation versions will be conducted, in this way we can see the language and cultural differences between Chinese and westerners. And a more reasonable translation version of Chang Gan Xing from the cognitive perspective will be presented, expecting illuminating the practice of translation.