A Cross-disciplinary Study On Metaphor Construction Of Learning In Academic Discourse

Lexical metaphor and grammatical metaphor in academic discourse have their unique features and functions.It is easier for people to understand academic terms by studying the use of metaphors in depth.Although some studies have analyzed the metaphorical construction of different texts from the single dimension of semantic metaphorical variation or grammatical realization,studies on the metaphorical construction of thematic item learning are still relatively lacking.In this study,based on two dimensions of metaphorical variation of meaning and its grammatical realization,a corpus-based comparative study was conducted to systematically investigate the metaphor construction of learning in the main body of 50 academic papers of applied linguistics and computer science published in authoritative foreign academic journals from 2012 to 2019,and to reveal the reasons for the differences.Results showed that,firstly,from the perspective of lexical metaphor,Learning is process in applied linguistics discourse and Learning is a method in computer science discourse were constructed.There was no significant difference between Learning is process metaphor in linguistics and Learning is method metaphor in the field of computer science,which indicated that Learning is method metaphor may not be a new metaphor.Under these two branches,this paper also found that metaphors Learning is education and Learning is journey appeared more frequently in linguistics while Learning is war appeared more frequently in the field of computer science.Secondly,in applied linguistics and computer science,learning metaphor was mainly realized through congruent realization.However,in terms of incongruent realization,nominalization and adjectivization appeared more frequently in computer science than in applied linguistics.Finally,embodiment can explain the metaphorical construction of learning.Different subject experiences produce different cognitive styles,so there are different mappings between source domain and target domain.Ideational metafunction can explain disciplinary experience through language,and disciplinary experience can also be mapped into incongruent grammatical realization.Overall, these findings suggest that students should explore the relationships between discipline-specific knowledge and cognitive experience of disciplines,which may have a certain enlightening effect on academic writing.