ABSTRACT
Language corruption is a form of mind engineering that relies on the manipulation of how we conceptualize the various perspectives found throughout our daily lives. By turning to the concept of linguistic putrefaction—which was equated to Orwell’s original idea of progressive language ‘decay,’ this chapter seeks to revisit this phenomenon from a cognitive linguistic perspective, defining it as an attempt to deliberately blend the conventionalized semantics of language stemming from political, ideological, or economic motivations. We present examples representing four commonly found forms of corrupted political language that have propagated throughout Chinese media, showing how particular terms can adopt new meanings to engineer a mental space designed to achieve an intended objective.
We then probe this phenomenon under a cognitive linguistic framework via concepts such as mental space and conceptual blending. We seek to demonstrate that some elements in the semantics of the corrupted expressions are either (a) activated and highlighted to achieve an ulterior goal at the conceptual level or (b) unusually mapped onto a blended space containing mismatched elements that are not normally or directly projected onto. We hope this approach provides a unique way of understanding how our thoughts and perceptions of ordinary language can be distorted amid conventional social discourses. Despite the prevalence of corruptive expressions perpetuated by online platforms, there are still reasons to remain optimistic, as common people utilize those very same channels to speak out and illuminate the true nature of each instance of corruptive language.
