Cognitive Metaphor Theory And Foreign Language Teaching

This thesis is trying to conduct an initial research on integrating metaphor into foreign language teaching based on the cognitive metaphor theory put forward by Lakoff &Johnson (1980). The study of metaphor has evolved from rhetoric, semantics and pragmatics to cognition. This makes it possible for cognitive metaphor to facilitate foreign language teaching by cultivating students'metaphorical competence. In this thesis, metaphor is mainly studied from the cognitive view. Metaphor helps human to extend thought, to conceptualize experience, to cognize the world, and to generate the language system. Human cognition and language interrelate with each other. It is believed that there must be a close relation between cognitive metaphor and foreign language teaching and learning. Some experts at home or aboard have set out to study metaphor from the perspective of applied linguistics and practical use----language teaching. Integrating cognitive metaphor into foreign language teaching is an important future study topic and one of the main future directions of metaphor study. The present foreign language teaching is bound to benefit a great deal from the close relationship between cognitive metaphor and human language and conceptual system. Therefore, it can be claimed that the study of metaphorical foreign language teaching is of great significance and obvious necessity.Since the study of metaphorical teaching is a relatively new area, the author of the thesis first elaborates on the rationales of metaphorical teaching based on various metaphor theories, mainly on the cognitive metaphor theory. Followed by the specific analysis of metaphorical competence and conceptual fluency, the author emphasizes the importance and necessity of cultivating students'metaphorical competence, and then proposes the main approaches and activities that metaphorical teaching involves. At the same time, the author also tries to integrate cognitive metaphor into other teaching practices, such as vocabulary teaching, culture teaching, spoken English teaching, and writing teaching in hopes that introducing cognitive metaphor to foreign language teaching opens a new way to the current foreign language teaching in China. Teaching foreign language in a metaphorical way makes both the teaching and learning process inspiring, interesting and attractive. It may also develop the studies on metaphors upgrade students'ability to achieve native-like conceptual fluency, and further facilitate their foreign language learning. However, what should be pointed out is that this paper is only a tentative and theoretical exploration of metaphorical teaching. The author hopes that this thesis may be helpful to the future study of metaphorical foreign language teaching.