Professor Wang Yin gives a lecture at SIS

Professor Wang Yin gives a lecture at SIS
Oct. 24, 2006, SIS

      Oct. 24^th, 2006, invited by the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies of School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Prof. Wang Yin, a famous scholar in China gave a lecture on “Experience philosophy and cognitive linguistics” in SIS. Prof. Wang is the vice-chairman of the National Society of Languages and Symbols, the vice-chairman of the China Association of Cognitive Linguistics, the administrative director of the China Association of Comparative Study of English and Chinese. Having a deep academic background of both eastern and western philosophy, logic and linguistics, he provided the audience with an academic feast that touched upon a variety of disciplines.
       Based on the deep thought about the link between western philosophy and linguistic theories, he combed the whole track of western philosophy’s development clearly from  Aristotle in ancient Greek, to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the time between 16^th century and 19^th century, and the 20^th century, pointing out the main resource and philosophic basis of cognitive linguistics that developed since the 1970s, which is the experience philosophy, and modestly giving out his own authoritative definition for cognitive linguistics in a narrow sense: it is a newly rising and multi-field subject which persists in the concept of experience philosophy, starts from the perspective of physical experience and perception, centers on the structure of concepts and the research of meaning, puts forth effort to seek the way of perception behind the fact of languages, and gives a unified explanation of languages through the methods of perception and knowledge structure. This is actually a fully generalized definition that operates from a strategically advantageous position.
      There was plenty of new information in the lecture. It was expected to last one and a half hours, while it actually took an hour more. However, nobody before lecturer brought it to an end. At the end of the lecture, there was a heated discussion about the direction of development and way out of current Chinese linguistic studies. Prof. Wang pointed out incisively that we must break the shackles of pure linguistic studies, and only in this way could the research of Chinese linguistics open a new world. The great manners and conscientious attitude on studies of such a scholar deeply impressed both the teachers and students present at the lecture.