英语词汇的语境意义分析Analysis of the Contextual Meaningof English Words [4]
论文作者:佚名论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-09编辑:刘宝玲点击率:14475
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关键词:英语词汇语境语境意义English wordscontextcontextual meaning
to comprehend words with regardless of culture context. Idioms in broad sense may include set phrases, proverbs, sayings, epigrams, slang expressions, colloquialisms, and quotations and so on. (Guo&Li, 2003)Idiom is an important part of the language and culture of society, they are often hard to understand, but people may get some enlightenment from the following story.
There is a story: A foreign student in the U.S sitting by a window, reading a book, she heard someone yelling “Look out!” so she stuck her head out the window, just then a board hurtled down from above, narrowly missing her, she looked up, half in anger, half in fright. There was a man on the roof doing repairs. “Didn’t you hear me call ‘look out’?” he demanded. “Yes, and that’s what I did” she replied.
Whether it is true or not, the story illustrates the problem with idioms. They are almost impossible to understand from the meaning of the individual words, idioms can be taken as the combination of English words which take culture as background; it can be known that the meaning of an idiom must be seen as a whole. A simple definition of idiom would be the use of common word in a special sense. To spill the beans, for instance, is not at all connected with beans; it means to tell something that is secret. As for the meaning of words used in idioms, we should think of the context they offered or look up the dictionary to find the accepted meaning in order to grasp the precise contextual meaning.
B Culture of Different Nations
The different historical backgrounds, geographical positions, religious beliefs, customs life styles and value system, people speaking different languages have their own special interpretation of the same world. In each language, there are particular labels or names for objects, events, experience and feeling as the speech community has arbitrarily decided to name them so. In English speaker’s mind, “magpie” is not so pleasant and people often associate it with person who chat a sot, but it is an auspicious bird in Chinese people’s mind, and is always associated with good luck and joyous occasions. Many Chinese people believe that “ when the magpie is singing, the happy event is coming”, since culture of various nations has many differences, so it is worth paying attention to the meaning of English words which often show English countries’ culture, and English language learners should understand them by putting themselves into English-speaking countries’ shoes.
Likewise, there exists a great important difference in what intellectual mean between U.S cultures and Chinese culture. In China, the term intellectual means engineers, interpreters----people who have had a college education----a middle school teacher. In many Chinese rural areas, even middle school students are considered intellectual. In the U.S and Europe, however, intellectual would conclude only people of high academic status such as college professors, but not ordinary college students. So the terms cover a much smaller range of people. As for the reason why those differences happened, it is unnecessary to mention.
These two examples illustrate that one must be careful in assuming that bilingual dictionary definitions give exact equivalence in meaning or that different language always have word to express the same thing. To English language learners, one had better not only study the words, but also study the culture.
III. Contextual Meaning and Technical Area
With the develo
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