A Study On Metaphor Use In Chinese Learners’ English Writing

Lexical metaphor is of great importance in second language acquisition, and it has constituted a serious challenge for second language teachers and learners. Therefore, studies on metaphor use in Chinese learners’ English writing can help to reveal EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition process and enlighten second language teaching and learning. To date, however, there has been no detailed investigation on metaphor use in Chinese learners’ English writing. Thus, the present study sets out to explore the features and functions of metaphor use across different levels of Chinese learners’ English writing, providing a matrix of descriptors for college English writing.The research questions in present study are(1) What are the differences between the amount and distributions of metaphor use across different levels of Chinese learners’ writing?(2) What are the distributions of metaphor types across different levels of Chinese learners’ writing?(3) How do metaphor functions correlate with the writing proficiency and how closely do these functions relate to the descriptors for college English writing?First, 136 pieces of English writing chosen from a small self-generated corpus of Chinese learners’ English writing texts were marked according to CET writing scoring criteria. Then, based on MIPVU, metaphor annotation was performed on 60 writing pieces which were divided into three levels with 20 samples for each level. Finally, the amount and distributions of metaphor use in Chinese learners’ English writing were analyzed with an emphasis on the relationship between metaphor use and writing proficiency, as well as the functions of metaphor across levels in depth.Results showed that(1) on the whole, metaphor is ubiquitous in Chinese learners’ English writing from the perspective of cognitive linguistic theories, as metaphorical language accounts for 14.9% of all linguistic units, in other words, one in approximately every seven words is related to metaphor use on average in Chinese EFL learners’ writing. Meanwhile, there are significant differences in metaphorical language use across different levels. As learners progress in their writing proficiency, the amount and proportion of metaphors increase from the low level to the high level as well;(2) specifically, following metaphors by conventionality, learners’ metaphorical language use is highly conventional, as conventional metaphors account for 99.2% and only 0.8% being novel of all the identified MRWs. But only the proportion of novel metaphors is found to increase slightly across different levels as learners make progress in their writing proficiency; following metaphors by types of word classes, open-class metaphors represent 64.1% of all identified MRWs and 35.9% of closed-class metaphors. Meanwhile, the proportion of both open and closed-class metaphors keeps a steady trend across different levels as learners progress in their writing proficiency; following metaphors by types of phrases, verbs, nouns and prepositions in order are three most frequency expressed metaphorically used word classes, representing 62.3% of all identified MRWs. Meanwhile, “in” and “into” are the most metaphorically used prepositions, and together with they account for 51.41% of all identified prepositional metaphors. Moreover, there is a steady rise in the proportion of only nominal and verbal metaphors from the low level to the high level;(3) the higher Chinese EFL learners writing proficiency, the more effective ability to manipulate metaphor.The above results provide a matrix of descriptors for college English writing relating to the metaphor use and add new evidence to current studies of metaphor use, which may help to uncover the development trajectory of Chinese EFL learners’ metaphorical competence.