1.3 Significance of the Study

    Nowadays, NCWs widely spread to those areas that are closely related to human’s daily life. The study on NCWs helps reveal the characteristics of people in modern society. Influenced by western cultures, people from all countries are in pursuit of novelty and fashion. NCWs meet their need of new fashionable expressions. Such words can show people’s preference and have rich meanings that can be felt through people’s emotion. Besides, with the boom of the cognitive linguistics, the studies from this perspective become more and more popular. Through analysis of the use of metaphor and metonymy, people will have a better understanding of NCWs and realize that the inner meanings are related to their emotion and cultural awareness.

    What is more, NCWs enrich the content of color words. In the previous time, people can only use simple color words to describe things. The color of rose, apple, dress are just the same in expression: red(红). Especially for young people, traditional color words can not satisfy their pursuit of originality. NCWs perfectly solve this problem for its new structure, formation and so on. NCWs are like fresh blood that makes the rejuvenation of the color words.

  2. Literature Review

2.1 Definition of Cognitive Metaphor

    Traditionally, metaphor was regarded as a figure of speech, which can be traced back to as early as Aristotle (1954) who defined metaphor in terms of deviation from ordinary usage. “Metaphor” consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else. Chen Wangdao(1932) also defined it in this way: 

“思想的对象同另外的事物有了类似点，说话和写文章时就用那另外的事物来比拟这思想的对象的，名叫譬喻。隐喻是比明喻更进一层的譬喻。明喻的形式是甲如同乙，隐喻的形式是甲就是乙；明喻在形式只是相类似的关系，隐喻在形式上却是相合的关系。”

(When there is any similarity between Concept A and Concept B, people will use Concept B to refer to Concept A. It is a method called “Piyu (generalized metaphor)”. Both simile and metaphor belong to “Piyu”. In simile, Concept A is similar to Concept B. In metaphor, Concept A is equal to Concept B.)