The Inspirations Of Cognitive Linguistics For ESL Vocabulary Teaching

Cognitive linguistics is a sub branch as well as a new approach in the theoretical linguistic field. It deviated from the so-called mainstream linguistics with generative grammar being its initial principle and now is flourishing on the basis of empiricism. Cognitive linguists share the belief that language is based on our experience of the world. Although scientific in its claims, cognitive linguistics appeals to the intuitive feeling that our use of language is related to how we perceive things and situations around us. G. Lakoff's metaphorical theory or cognitive semantics of the Berkeley School is applied in this paper, together with the experiential view held by F. Ungerer and H. J. Schmid, to demonstrate the inspiration of cognitive linguistics for vocabulary teaching of ESL. It lays special emphasis upon such aspects as the priority of teaching basic level category terms, cognitive models and the semantics motivation of terms, the underlying link between the polysemy of terms, and the relations among metaphor, metonymy and idioms. In conclusion, this paper shows that cognitive linguistics may provide vocabulary teaching a promising new perspective.This thesis is divided up into six chapters. The first chapter briefly deals with the development of cognitive linguistics and the main claim of the experiential view held by F. Ungerer and H. J. Schmid. The experiential view holds the main claim that, instead of postulating logical rules and objective definitions on the basis of theoretical considerations and introspection, a more practical and empirical path should be pursued. The theories of category, prototype, cognitive model, image schema, metaphor and metonymy applied in this thesis all belong to this viewpoint.The second chapter concentrates on the relations between categories and ESL vocabulary teaching. It pursues the experiential view by looking at early psychological studies of cognitive categories, most of which were conducted by Eleanor Rosch. These initial studies led to the prototype model of categorization. And there are generally three levels of categorizations: basic level categories, superordinate categories and subordinate categories. It is argued that basic levelcategories for objects and organisms are cognitively more significant than either superordinate categories or subordinate categories, but the notion of basic level categories may be transferred to the domain of actions. Hence, while giving priority to teach basic level category terms, the division of superordinate category terms is also necessary in vocabulary teaching. Items, whose highlighting and collecting function are already conventionalized, will be introduced together with basic level categories. Other superordinates, especially abstract categories, should wait until the possibilities of basic level vocabulary have been exhausted. Besides, various choices of subordinate categories terms should be made before teaching different learners.The third chapter starts out from the concept of cognitive models, the anchor point that prototypes and cognitive categories depend on. And then, the semantic motivation of terms is stated to prove the influence of cognitive semantics on learning certain lexicon, such as terms concerning human's body. The analysis of the cognitive processes of the words' semantic development as a prototype may help teachers to reinforce the students' impression on these words and consequently make them master the meanings of the words better.The fourth chapter is devoted to the analysis on the underlying link between the polysemy of terms, in which the theory of image schema is used to distinguish polysemy from homonym, and also to demonstrate their relations. As the term suggests, an image schema is a mental picture which is not just an abstract semantic principle, but more elementary than both concrete categories and abstract principles. The specific usages of some lexicon in different contexts, which are usually ignored in traditional ESL vocabulary teaching, may be competently demonstrated by image schema.In the fifth chapter, metaphor, metonymy and idioms are brought together to justify the significance of learning the metaphorical meanings of lexicon. It is pointed out that everyday language is rich with metaphorical and metonymic expressions. To learn well metaphors and metonymies will certainly help language learners complete the task of acquiring a language. While learning words, the students should be warned that to learn the metaphoric meaning of a word is as important as to learn its basic meaning. And also the teacher undertakes the duty toexplain to his students the metaphoric meanings according to the extent of the learner's understanding to the language.The final chapter concludes that although language teaching is not originated in cognitive linguistic research, it may benefit a host from being put on a cognitive basis. Cognitive linguistics provides language teaching a promising new perspective on many essential aspects. Vocabulary teaching of ESL is just one of these aspects. Undoubtedly, the traditional teaching methods still play a significant role in vocabulary teaching. But it is also unwise to ignore the influence from the new findings and developing theories. If linguists and teachers go further the study on the teaching approaches from cognitive linguistic aspect, we may find more efficient way in teaching words to ESL students.