The Neural Processing Of Literal And Conventional Metaphor Language Of Chinese Intransitive Verbs In Sentence

Metaphor is pervasive in our daily life, and is the focus in many researches. The research about metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle who thought that metaphor is a kind of rhetoric, a figure of speech. And this idea had taken the dominated role until 1930s. Richards first challenged Aristotle's opinion and later Black proposed Interaction theory which put metaphor into the field of cognition. Lakoff and Johnson, based on Black's idea, insist that metaphor is not only a figure of speech; it is the cognitive tool for human. However, how is metaphor processed? Is it the same as literal language, or different? What is the difference? What is the role of right hemisphere in metaphor comprehension? Is it the only hemisphere involved? Concerned about the above questions, many researchers have begun to find ways to give answers. With the development of new instruments, like fMRI and ERP, it is probable to give scientific and evidential answers. The researches about metaphor processing are mainly about English and other phonetic letter languages, few are Chinese. And there is still no final answer on the above questions. This research is to explore the neural mechanism of Chinese literal and metaphor processing. The main research questions are (1), Is metaphor more difficult than literal language to process? (2), Is the right hemisphere more involved in metaphor processing?And the instrument is the ERPs which has very high temporal resolution. Before the experiment, we have the pre-test which is the questionnaire by 50 students in Chongqing University, to judge the literal and metaphor language (5 levels) and then determine the grade of metaphor. In this research, all the metaphors are conventional ones which are daily used. In the experiment part, there are 21 subjects involved in the EEG data recording. After the analysis of the data, we get the results.The results indicate that, first, conventional metaphors are processed directly without first transforming from literal meanings; the processing of metaphor it includes more complex selection and judgment than literal meanings. Second, in conventional metaphor processing, both the right and left hemispheres play a role, with the right hemisphere showing a little priority. We believe that right hemisphere is nor specific for metaphor processing, but for the unfamiliar semantic integration, and metaphorical meaning is just part of it. The function of the right hemisphere depends on the grade of the metaphor, that is, novel metaphor can elicit more activation in right hemisphere, and conventional ones will show less. Third, females are more active and sensitive to language than males.