International Chinese Education From The Perspective Of Metaphor Of Time And Space

As an important way of thinking for human beings to understand the world,metaphor is also of great significance for language teaching.Previous scholars have separated the study of metaphor from rhetoric and gradually entered the field of cognitive linguistics.The concept of spatiotemporal metaphor,as an important branch of conceptual metaphor,also has practical value for international Chinese classrooms.However,there are relatively few associations between the concept of spatiotemporal metaphor and teaching in international Chinese education.By comparing the concepts of time and space in Chinese and English,it is found that both of them are dependent on the concept of space in their formation,but they are different.The spatial priming paradigm proves the existence of psychological timelines in the concept of spatiotemporal metaphor,and their different tendencies in choosing spatiotemporal mapping psychological timelines.The former prefers to choose vertical up and down axes,while the latter prefers horizontal left and right axes;At the same time,through the time chart task,it was found that the conceptual projections of implicit spatiotemporal directions in the front and rear axes were different between the two;Using the Time Focus Scale to explore the differences in their orientations in different time focuses,it is concluded that Chinese native speakers tend to be more past oriented,while English native speakers tend to be future oriented.The differences between Chinese and English spatiotemporal metaphors are probably due to four factors: the multimodality of spatiotemporal metaphors,the mechanism of spatiotemporal mapping,sociocultural psychology,and individual differences.The discovery of the multimodality of spatiotemporal metaphors and the kinematic perspective of mapping mechanisms is of great significance for international Chinese language teaching.On the one hand,it provides data and theoretical support for the introduction of multimodal theory into teaching.On the other hand,it provides inspiration for strategies for teachers to improve classroom questioning order and enhance students’ self-efficacy and motivation in international Chinese language education.In addition,it also provides some optimized opinions for the cultural classroom and provides new ideas for the dissemination of Chinese culture.