Metaphorical Cognition And English Language Learning

In the classical theories, metaphor is treated only as a figure of speech and as deviance from literal language. In the contemporary theory, metaphor is considered as a matter of thought, a way of cognition. And metaphor is pervasive in our everyday life and language. The view that metaphor plays a fundamental structural role in organizing our conceptual systems, rather than serving a deviant rhetorical effect, is now generally accepted. In this thesis, I will take the contemporary view and analyzed it as a device of cognition; on the basis of the close relationship between language and metaphor, metaphor and English language learning, I will suggest some metaphorical strategies for the final purpose of promoting English language learning.In the first chapter, I am concerned with the three working mechanisms of metaphor - conceptual metaphor, image metaphor, and blending theory - to show the essence of metaphorical cognition.Conceptual metaphor is a mental construct mapping from a concrete source domain onto a target domain (which is often abstract) for the purpose of understanding the target domain. Its cognitive force lies in the fact that each mapping occurs at the superordinate level providing people with easy access to abstract notions in terms of systematic categories. What's more, each mapping defines an open-ended class of potential correspondences across inference patterns. When activated, a mapping may apply to a novel source domain knowledge structure and characterize a corresponding target domain knowledge structure.Image metaphors are a class of metaphors that function to map one conventional mental image onto another. Image metaphors adhere to The Invariance Principle, which preserves the cognitive topology of the source domain, in a way consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain. Cognitive force of image metaphors lies in people's knowledge of imageschemas, which are mostly accumulated via human physical experiences over time. Image metaphors are especially useful and powerful in explaining some imageable idioms and proverbs.Blending Theory typically makes use of a four-space model. These spaces include two 'input' spaces, plus a 'generic' space, representing conceptual structure that is shared by both inputs, and the 'blend' space, where material from the two inputs combines and interacts. The blended space develops emergent structure of its own not provided by either input. The blending theory is concerned with on-line, dynamic cognitive work people do to construct meaning for local purposes of thought and action. Its cognitive force lies in its capacity to deal with novel and on-line examples.Our conceptual system is not something that we are normally aware of. But human language is an important source of evidence for what our conceptual system is like. Metaphor as a device of cognition can be examined most readily when it is expressed in language. So in the second chapter, I will try to prove the existence of metaphorical cognition through linguistic phenomena like polysemy, inference patterns, novel metaphorical language, and semantic change. The existence of huge amount of polysemous words in English lexicon and the fact that the relatedness of meanings of a polysemous word prove that metaphor plays a crucial role in the creation and extension of novel meanings of a word. The fact that a pattern of inferences from one conceptual domain can be used in another domain in everyday language also indicates the existence of metaphorical cognition. Interpreting linguistic expressions as novel metaphors necessitates a basic mechanism - Extensions of conventional metaphors. A word's semantic change as Generalization, Narrowing, Amelioration, Pejoration also involves metaphorical reasoning to some extent. On the basis of linguistic evidence, we can say that most of our everyday conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And in the second half of chapter two, I will illustrate the role of metaphor in language from two general aspects, namely, filling lexical gaps...