Conundrums Approached from the Cognitive Perspective of “the Impartment and Inheritance of Connotation and Denotation”

Abstract

The most distinctive feature of conundrum is the deliberate misinterpretation in the course of its application. The present paper attempts a new cognitive approach to the understanding of conundrums. Based on psychological laws of mankind, the conundrum begins with the questioner's leaving a certain linguistic item on purpose, which will definitely cause deliberate misinterpretation. The process of its understanding is the result of the replier's taking advantage of the impartment and inheritance of the connotation and denotation to disguisedly replace another concept.Keywords: conundrums, the impartment and inheritance of connotation and denotation (IICD) approach, deliberate misinterpretation, disguised replacement of concept The Conundrum and Its FeaturesThe conundrum is an ambiguous question, a kind of word-play that people ask for fun, which is a combination of language features and mind-sets. All conundrums are unexceptionally composed of two parts: the first part is a question with a series of clues, which lead people to the stereotyped thought; the second part is the answer, to which people tumble at last. A Chinese scholar Wang (1996) defines conundrums as involving puns and other shrewd and witty questions. It is intentionally worded in a puzzling manner in order to be guessed, especially as a form of amusement. In order to have a clear understanding of the conundrum, let's look at the following examples: 1) What month do soldiers like least? Key: March.2) The farmers in this village used modern methods but harvested no apples this year? Why? Key: They planted peach trees.In example 1), the question seems to figure out soldiers' least favorite month of a year. It could be any month of a year so long as it holds water. However, this couldn't be the most appropriate answer to this conundrum as it cannot achieve any amusing effect. As a matter of fact, the key to this conundrum makes use of polysemy of the word "march": it seems to refer to the third month of a year, but actually to the action of marching. In this example, the questioner intentionally creates the context in which it seems to have favorable answers which are actually undesirable. In example 2), the question presupposes that the farmers planted apple trees this year. If the replier accepts the presupposition, then he is misled to a mental trap.The conundrum usually takes the form of a brief wh-question which is posed to be answered with an appropriate but amusing guess. The conundrum has its own features. First of all, it consists of a question and an answer. Dienhart (1998) labels the former "text 1 " and the latter "text 2 " respectively. The initial part is usually a shrewd and witty question with puns or not. Only people break through the stereotyped thought, can they arrive at the most appropriate solution. Secondly, the conundrum is not created to seek or provide information, but for fun-making and amusement. When people interpret a conundrum, they always work out the answer in a conventional way, which is maximum relevant to ...