AMetaphoricalStudyonChinese.PDF

ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. 1379-1383, November 2015 DOI: /10.17507/jltr.0606.28 A Metaphorical Study on Chinese Neologisms Yanxia Zheng Faculty of Foreign Languages, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai’an, Jiangsu, China Abstract—In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a way of thinking and an important means to perceive or conceptualize the world. It is also an economic and efficient way to create new words. With the development of the society, many neologisms spring up and are widely used by people. This paper aims at examining these Chinese neologisms from the perspective of metaphor by interpreting some examples. The findings indicate that Chinese neologisms have their semantic motivations and the interpretation of them is the result of operation of human cognition mechanism, which involves the metaphorical and metonymic thinking of human beings. This study provides a new way and perspective to study Chinese neologisms, which can also be used to study neologisms in other languages as well. Index Terms—Chinese neologisms, metaphor, metonymy, cognitive interpretation I. INTRODUCTION With the rapid development of the society and the globalization of the world, new things and phenomena emerge constantly. Language, as a tool for human to express thoughts and exchange ideas, is also changing accordingly. As the most active and sensitive element of a language, vocabulary changes much faster and more notably than the other elements of the language, which attracts wide attention of linguistic researchers. During the past 10 years, lots of new words and expressions have popped