Chapter 1 Introduction
With the gradual development of cognitive science, cognitive linguistics has broughta new fresh air into the researches of the traditional linguistics. Cognitive linguisticsfocuses on the mutual relationship between language and thought, which believes thatlanguage is a way of thought or a pattern of the manifestation of what people think. As oneof the major topics of cognitive linguistics, cognitive motivation has been paid muchattention in recent years. Different from the view of the arbitrary nature of language, itemphasizes that the production of certain language has its original underlying cognitivemotivations, which means that there actually exist various reasons for the appearance ofsome linguistic forms.The researches of cognitive motivation in linguistics come down to every level oflinguistic forms, such as the phonetic level, the semantic level, the syntactic level or eventhe textual level. In recent years, the direction of researches has mainly pointed into thelevel of syntax and focused on exploring the underlying cognitive motivation of theproduction of grammatical structures. Although there are some studies about the cognitivemotivation on the lexical level, they are only fastened to explain the internal motivation ofthe formation of compounds. In other words, few researches are related to explore thecognitive motivation of the word-formation in its common sense. Interjections, as a wordclass, have long been ignored for its relatively small quantity. If any, the researches of thecognitive motivation of interjections are almost on the basis of its onomatopoeic nature,which means that the formation of interjections is totally due to the imitation of naturalsounds. Thus, in addition of the direct imitation of natural sounds, the author has decidedto explore more other various explanations or what is called “the cognitive motivation” ofthe formation of English interjections.
The thesis has both the theoretical and the realistic significance. On one hand, it hasbeen mentioned above that the cognitive motivation of English interjections is mainlyexplained from the perspective of the imitation of natural sounds. However, in fact, someother cognitive motivations can also contribute to the formation of English interjections.Through the researches of the cognitive motivation of English interjections, the thesiswill lead us to explore various explanations of its word- formation and to enrich thetheories of the motivation of the word-formation in the field of cognitive linguistics. It hasbeen emphasized by the author that the basis of cognitive linguistics is that language is akind of thinking pattern which is shaped by thoughts. Thus, the research of the thesis willfuthur contribute to people’s understanding of the relation among language, culture andthought. On the other hand, the research of the thesis will contribute to the process of thesecond language learning by revealing the underlying motivational process of theword-formation and to arouse second language learners’ inner interests in taking use ofvarious learning strategies in the process of understanding and finally rememberingvocabularies that are usually difficult to recall. In addition, it has been mentioned abovethat the thesis will also give a basic analysis on various creative expressions of Englishinterjections in the style of comics on the basis of the multimodal metaphor. The creationof arts should firmly conform to the rule that the final product must be a kind ofunderstandable expressions. Therefore, what is studied in this thesis will edify composers,such as cartoonists, to create more novel understandable expressions in their works, andwill benefit translators in successfully translating these original works into differentlanguage editions in order to clearly and accurately express writers’ intended meanings toreaders.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
The author has given a brief introduction about the topic of this thesis. In t
