The Exploration of the Semantic Expansion Path and Generality Motivation of “Rock/Burn” Based on Image Schema

Catchwords have enriched the language during its development. In recent years, in addition to the basic original meaning of “rock/burn”, some new usages such as “too rocking” and “let us rock” have appeared in the network language. The polysemy system of “rock/burn” comes from the image schema formed in people’s cognitive domain with the development of social times. Based on the original meaning, grammatical meaning, and cognitive experience, this paper constructs the image schema of “rock/burn”, and makes a supplementary analysis and interpretation of its semantic expansion path from two angles of part of speech and phrase collocation. Finally, this study discusses the generality motivation of “rock/burn” from three aspects: the generality of word meaning, the economy of language, and the popularity of the network.