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1、Cultural Semantics:An Introduction文化语义学导论,讲授者：吴建平博士讲授者单位、职称：厦门大学英文系教授、博士生导师 电子邮箱：;.个人网站：,General Requirements,1.Two weeks after this course is over,you are required to submit a course paper by email.Your score will be given on the basis of your course paper,your oral presentation and the frequency o
2、f your attendance.2.Since this course is presented in both English and Chinese,you are required to read reference books published in both English and Chinese.3.Questions and requests can be presented to me by email or face-to-face.,ContentsA General IntroductionChapter 1 What is Meaning?Chapter 2 Le
3、xical Meaning Chapter 3 What is Culture?Chapter 4 The Four Major Schools of Cultural Studies Chapter 5 Word and PhraseChapter 6 Proposition,Sentence and UtteranceChapter 7 Register and Context Chapter 8 Semantic Features Chapter 9 Text TypologyChapter 10 Twelve Major Methods of Text/Discourse Analys
4、isChapter 11 Major Semantic Theories Chapter 12 Some Approaches to Cultural Semantics Chapter 13 Speech Act Theory Chapter 14 Pragmatics Chapter 15 Intercultural Communication Theory Chapter 16 The Ways of StudyBibliography,A General Introduction,Between man and the physical world there exists a wor
5、ld of language through which man knows and tries to master the physical world.Language reflects what man knows about the physical world and the world of language is a mirror of the physical world and a storehouse of all the spiritual creations by man.Language is the concentrated reflection of the kn
6、owledge of man about the physical world.Meaning is the core of language.What makes,the meaning originate,develop,change or die?The main factors are the existence of the physical world,changes and human thinking.There must have been a philosophical basis for any one school of linguistics in the cours
7、e of its development.There are several distinguishable,and more or less well-known philosophical theories of meaning,which seek to provide an answer to the question:What is meaning?Out of them we prefer to combine some aspects of the following philosophical theories:1)The referential theory;,2)The m
8、eaning-is-use theory;3)The theory of situation;4)The theory of intention and 5)The decon-structional theory and adopt the combination as the philosophical basis of his tentative theory of cultural semantics.1)The referential(or reference,or denotational,or naming)theory:the meaning of an expression
9、is what it refers to or denotes,or stands for;e.g.dog means either the general class of dogs or the essential property which they all share.,2)The meaning-is-use theory:the meaning of an expression is determined by,if not identical with,its use in the language.3)The theory of situation:Meaning is th
10、e bridge between linguistic forms and situation.4)The theory of intention:the meaning of an expression is the intention of its speaker.5)The deconstructional theory:Meaning is not what is fixed forever and is a mark which varies with the development of text language,with old meaning disappearing and
11、 new meaning coming out.,The Major Difference between Semantics and Pragmatics,Based on the previously-mentioned,we may put forth a tentative definition of traditional semantics with some modification:semantics is the study of meaning in isolation(independent of context),and a tentative definition o
12、f pragmatics:the study of meaning in interaction(dependent on context).Now we may see the major difference between semantics and pragmatics:static vs dynamic.The use theory and the functionalist semantics play a key role in turning the traditional semantics from a static study into a dynamic one,i.e
13、.to place the study of meaning in social-communicative context.,Both semantics and pragmatics are concerned with meaning,but difference between them can be traced to two different uses of the verb to mean:(1)What does X mean?(2)What did you mean by X?Semantics traditionally deals with meaning as a d
14、yadic relation as in(1),while pragmatics deals with meaning as a triadic relation as in(2).Thus meaning in pragmatics is defined relative to a speaker or user of the language whereas meaning in semantics is defined purely as a property of expressions in a given language,in abstraction from particula
15、r situations,speakers,or hearers(Leech 1983:6).In other words,semantics involves the relationship between symbol and referent whereas,pragmatics is concerned with the relationship between symbol and its user.This is a rough-and-ready distinc-tion from the philosophical point of view.From linguistic
16、point of view,semantics is the study of meaning regardless of speech situations or contexts while pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to speech situations or contexts.Semantics is concerned with sentence meaning and pragmatics with speaker meaning(or utterance meaning).There are some over
17、lapping parts between semantics and pragmatics at the stage of their latest developments and a clear demarcation is not possible at present.,Chapter 1 What is Meaning?,Meaning has more than 20 definitions(see Ogden pp186-187;Leech p1;Xu pp3-16;dictionaries).Meaning is a reference or a situation a si
18、gn or a form represents.In different systems of reference or situation what the sign or the form represents(the meaning)will not be the same.Generally it can be divided into two major types:Referential Meaning and Cognitive Meaning.,E.g.referential meaning:Who did you mean?John or Mary?When Jane tal
19、ks about“her best friend”,she means me.If you look out of the window now,youll see who I mean.When Helen mentioned“the fruit cake”,she meant that rock-hard object on the table.cognitive meaning:What does the word“software”mean?,Chapter 2 Lexical Meaning,Lexical meaning in terms of linguistics instea
20、d of lexicology is almost equal to referential(conceptual)meaning.To be exact,lexical meaning comprises the following(Leech.G.N.):l.Conceptual meaning;2.Connotative meaning;3.Stylistic meaning;4.Affective meaning;5.Reflected(or associated)meaning;6.Collocative meaning;7.Thematic meaning.,l.Conceptua
21、l meaning E.g.woman human+female+adult.Conceptual meaning varies with objective changes.The two key points for analyzing the conceptual meaning of a word:1)the context in which a word exists;2)the historical changes with which a word varies.2.Connotative meaningE.g.woman(frail)(prone to tears)(emoti
22、onal)(inconstant)(gentle)(compassionate)(hard-working).Tom is a pig.(dirty;eats a lot).He is a tiger.(very cruel).Connotative meaning does not exist alone.It is usually attached to the conceptual meaning and varies with different persons,ages,societies,countries,times,etc.The connotative meaning of
23、some words could be the same even in different,languages E g 狡猾(fox and 狐狸);温顺(lamb and 羔羊);无私的爱(mother and母亲).3.Stylistic meaningformal/informal/literary/poetic/colloquial/slang.4.Affective meaningAffective meaning does not stand alone.It is realized through conceptual or connotative or stylistic m
24、eaning.Sometimes through intonation or exclamation,etc.E.g.famous-notorious;statesman-politician;resolute-obstinate.5.Reflected(or associated)meaningReflected meaning will result in the association of the listener/reader with some idea or thing.E.g.some taboo words related with sex:cock,intercourse,
25、ejaculation,erection,etc.6.Collocative meaning Collocative meaning,in fact,mainly refers to the contextual,meaning of a word.E.g.pretty girl-handsome boy;He mounted his steed.(literary)He got on his gee-gee.(colloquial)7.Thematic meaningThematic meaning refers to the meaning embodied by different wo
26、rd orders,sentence structures,stresses and emphases.E.g.Tom owns the most handsome car in New York.The most handsome car in New York is owned by Tom.The most handsome car in New York belongs to Tom.My classification of lexical meaning:1.Conceptual meaning(the same as Leechs);2.*Connotative meaning=s
27、tylistic meaning+affective meaning+figurative meaning;,3.Structural meaning=grammatical meaning(=the distributing meaning of a word or phrase in a sentence,which naturally includes what Leech calls“thematic meaning”),the meaning of cohesion and coherence,the meaning of inflexions,the same as Leechs
28、collocative meaning and any meaning resulted from the change of parts of speech and sentence structures.4.*Cultural meaning=culture-specific meaning(e.g.jiaozi)+culture-associative meaning(e.g.rose).5.Pragmatic meaning=the meaning of those words and phrases which display or make the pragmatic senses
29、 even when isolated from a specific context.E.g.Behave oneself(used to speak to children only).,Chapter 3 What is Culture?,The notion of culture was first put forward by the German scholars in the 19th century(Xiu-yi Wu,1988:8).So far there have existed in this world over 260 definitions of culture.
30、Listed below are some key definitions of culture:Culture is a complex which includes objects,knowledge,beliefs,arts,ethics,laws,conventions and other acquired social abilities and customs.(Jia-zu Gu et al,1990:3)Culture is a behavioural pattern shared and kept by a human community and acquired after
31、 birth.(Jia-zu,Gu et al,1990:20-1)Culture is the total of all human products,including all the objects and tools invented by human beings and the conventions of the human life which have been passed on from generation to generation.(Jin-fu Guo,1993:1-2)Culture should be classified into two categorie
32、s:1)in a narrow sense it lines with politics,economics,military affairs,etc.and becomes a part of human social activities,i.e.the parts related to the human social life such as literature,arts,science,philosophy,ethics,fashions,etc.;2)in a broad sense it is equal to civilization,including material a
33、nd spiritual aspects in the human society,i.e.material civilization and spiritual civilization.(Xiu-yi Wu,1988:8-9),Based on the above-mentioned,my tentative definition is Culture is anything created by human beings,material or spiritual,that is the result or product of human thought and work,univer
34、sally accepted by human communities and passed on from generation to generation.This definition can be both applicable to the common culture of human beings in this world and the specific culture of a nation.,Chapter 4 The Four Major Schools of Cultural Studies,1)Peter L.Berger and phenomenology 2)M
35、ary Douglas and cultural anthropology 3)Michel Foucault and structuralism 4)Jurgen Habermas and critical theory,Chapter 5 Word and Phrase,Generally,word is considered as the smallest of the linguistic units which can in normal case occur on its own in speech or writing.Traditional semantic theories
36、in most cases take into consideration only the meaning of words.In this dissertation,the meaning of phrases is taken into consideration as well.Phrases here refer to all those linguistic items which are made up of two or more words(including idioms),nominal or adjectival or prepositional or adverbia
37、l,and function as well as words.Word Meaning and Phrase Meaning Word meaning(or phrase meaning)refers to what a word(or a phrase)expresses about an entity,real or imaginary.,Since a phrase can function as well as a word,a phrase also has the same types of meaning as a word does.Ogden&Richards Meanin
38、g TheoryIn their book entitled“the Meaning of Meaning”,Ogden&Richards designed a diagram known as Ogden&Richards Semantic Triangle as follows:Thought or Reference Symbol Referent,A New Semantic TriangleSince a word and a phrase have the same function,Ogden&Richards Semantic Triangle can be used to d
39、escribe the phrase meaning as well as the word meaning.Thought or Reference Description Generalization Word/Phrase Referent,The Five Types of Meaning,My five types of meaning are now stated in more details as follows:1)The conceptual meaning,which is based on the linguistic concept and is something
40、highly abstracted and universal,forms the core part of the overall meaning of a linguistic semiotic sign.In my view,the common culture of all the nations in this world is usually reflected through the conceptual meaning whereas the specific culture of a particular nation decides upon the connotative
41、 meaning of the language of the nation.2)The connotative meaning here comprises 1)affective meaning;2)figurative meaning;and 3)stylistic meaning.The affective meaning refers to both commendatory and,derogatory aspects of a linguistic semiotic sign;the figurative meaning refers to the euphemistic,hyp
42、erbole,ironical,etc.aspects of a linguistic semiotic sign;the stylistic meaning refers to the temporal(e.g.archaic senses or words),regional(e.g.dialectal words),social(e.g.slang,vulgar words or senses),occasional(e.g.colloquial,formal words or senses),professional(e.g.jargon,mathematical,physical,c
43、hemical terms or senses)aspects of a linguistic semiotic sign.3)The cultural meaning refers to the meaning of a particular nations culture contained or implied in a linguistic semiotic sign.It includes culture-specific meaning and culture-associative meaning.The culture-specific meaning of a word or
44、 phrase usually cannot find its equivalent in another language.E.g.the English,words such as salutatorian,punk,hippie,etc.are not able to find their equivalents in Chinese;the Chinese words such as饺子(jiaozi)、馄饨(huntun)、景泰蓝(jingtailan)can not find their counterparts in English.The culture-associated
45、meaning refers to what a native speaker of a particular language usually associates with when using the related word or phrase.For example,the English word rose will associate a native speaker of English with love while the Chinese word“满月(manyue)”will associate a native speaker of Chinese with happ
46、iness and family reunion.Besides,colour words in both Chinese and English will also associate the native speakers of both languages with different images and feelings.4)The structural meaning includes grammatical meaning(=the distributing meaning of a word or phrase,in a sentence),the meaning of coh
47、esion and coherence,the meaning of inflexions,the meaning of parts of speech,etc.,and the collocative meaning of words or phrases of a language.E.g.white coffee,black coffee,white Christmas,insist on,persist in,drop a hint,fond of,keen on,etc.5)The pragmatic meaning refers to the meaning of those wo
48、rds and phrases which display or make the pragmatic senses even when isolated from a specific context.E.g.Behave oneself(used to speak to children only).Obviously,out of the 5 types of meaning above,connotative meaning(including affective meaning,figurative meaning and stylistic meaning),cultural me
49、aning(including culture-specific meaning and culture-associative meaning),and pragmatic meaning should be our focus of attention for cultural semantic study.,There are,in my personal view,five common patterns of equating interlinguistic symbols:(1)S=T(“S”stands for the source linguistic semiotic sym
50、bol with a mono-sense or one of the senses of a source linguistic semiotic symbol:“=”means“is equal to”:“T”stands for the target linguistic semiotic symbol:the same hereinafter).This equation means that a source linguistic semiotic symbol or one of the senses of a source linguistic semiotic symbol h
