Analysis of the Contextual Meaningof English Words
Abstract
With the development of science and technology, more and more words appear to express new concepts, but not every concept has its own word. Therefore, many common words are used to express some new concepts, then a common word has its special meaning due to the place where it is used, namely contextual meaning. As for context, it is the environment that the word is used; what is more, it often determines the exact meaning of words. As an English language learner, one should not only understand the words, but also make use of them flexibly. In this paper, the author divides context into four parts: figures of speech, culture, technical area and humor. Since metonymy, metaphor and allusion are main parts of figures of speech, so the author analyzed them in detail, while the effects of culture on the contextual meaning consists of the effects of idioms on it and the effects of culture of different nations on it. What is more, detailed introduction is obtained for adopting for adopting of many examples. The analysis on contextual meaning of English words is able to provide a clue for understanding the meaning of English words used in some special context rightly as well as to avoid embarrassment caused by interpreting a word literally.
摘 要
随着科技的发展,英语中越来越多的新词用于表达一个新的概念,但并非每一个新的概念的出现都伴随一个新词的出现。因此很多普通词也用于表达某个特定的概念,所以英语中单词就因为所处的位置不同而具有不同的意义,这也就是语境意义。作为一个
英语语言学习者,我们不仅仅是为了认识语言,我们还要灵活运用这些词汇。在本文中,作者把英语词汇语境分为四个部分:修辞,文化,科技和幽默等。其中修辞主要以比喻,引用和借代为代表分别加以详细分析,文化语境主要以谚语和不同国家的文化为代表加以分析。值得一提的是文中采用多个例句进行说明能让我们得到详细的介绍。通过文章我们可以深入了解各种语境对英语词汇意义的影响,这对我们以后的准确理解英语词汇在句中的意义提供线索,也避免了由于望文生义而引起的尴尬。
Introduction
G. Leech, a famous linguist proposes three types of meaning in his Semantics, first published in 1974, as followings: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning and contextual meaning. Leech says that lexical meaning is the meaning of an isolated word in a dictionary, and this component of meaning is identical in all forms of the word. Here is an example for illustration: The word forms begin, begins, began, begun, beginning possess different grammatical meaning of tenses, persons and so on. In each of these forms one finds the same lexical meaning expressing the process of movement.
Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning identical in individual forms of different words. For instance, the tense meaning in the word-forms worked, studied, taught, or the plural meaning girl, girls or the case meaning boy’s, word’s and so on.
Except for lexical meaning and grammatical meaning, contextual meaning depends upon context. Different contexts give words different meanings. Therefore, one should pay close attention to the types of context. Generally speaking, there are four types of contexts: figures of speech, culture, technical area and humor.
Figures of speech refer to metonymy, metaphor, allusion and so on. That is to say, the contextual meaning ,which out of all the possible meanings that the original related or suggested, including the characters of the original and enlightenments from the original, is the acceptable meaning to the word.
The News World Encyclopedia defines culture as “it is the totality of the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic attitudes shared by a group, including its tradition, habits, social customs, morals, laws and social relations. Sociologically, every society, on every level, has its culture.” (Guo&Li, 2003) Consequently, English word meaning, to some extent depe
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