Idioms, Cognition and Culture: The Meaning Construction of Chinese New Idioms Based on Blending Model

This paper analyzes and interprets the meaning construction of Chinese new idioms using a
conceptual blending approach and discusses the results against the background of Chinese cultural
context in order to gain a broader understanding of the phenomena. And this study focuses on
Chinese new idioms. Conceptual blending is a primary means of encoding the metaphorical meaning
of idiom. It blends the concepts, which come from different cognitive frames, through the cross-space
mapping, to form the new concept, namely, the metaphorical meaning of idiom. The process of idiom
formation is essentially a semantic leap, thus, a process of frame-shifting. Moreover, the cultural
models play a very important role in the conceptual blending, which forms the idioms. It provides
possibilities for conceptual blending with unique cultural connotations. Therefore, this paper is
intended to use the conceptual blending theory to reveal the meaning construction mechanism of
Chinese new idioms for readers, so as to make readers understand that the meaning of Chinese new
idiom is constructed through the non-linear integrated approach. And this paper introduces the nonlinear
semantic analysis method to the study of idiom’s meaning construction will provide a new
perspective for semantic study of idiom.