The Metaphorical Representation Of Moral Concept

Morality, an abstract concept that cannot be directly perceived, is usually described by means of metaphor, the essence of which is to construct unfamiliar and abstract concepts by employing familiar and concrete image schemas, such as the position(up/down), brightness(light/dark), cleanness(clean/dirty), or smell (sweet/smelly) of objects. Previous empirical research has suggested that morality has implicit associations with various source domains (position, brightness...). There are, however, inconsistences in the true existences of metaphor representations of morality for each of the source domains. The aim of the current research program is to examine the degrees of associations between each of the source domains and morality, and to compare those different associations. Furthermore, the research is to reveal and describe the developmental pattern of the associations of moral metaphor from children of primary school to adults.Two studies were conducted to answer the above questions. Study1was to examine whether adults perceive moral concepts by four source domains:position (up/down), brightness (light/dark), cleanness (clean/dirty), and smell (sweet/smelly) by the paradigm of Implicit Association Test (IAT). The differences of the associations with the four domains were compared and described. Study2was to reveal the developmental pattern of metaphor representations of morality on four age groups of participants:children of Grade3, Grade5, Grade7, and Grade9. The main results were as follows:(1) There were significant associations of moral concepts with each of the source domains for normal adults. The degree of association of moral concept with position is lower than those of the associations with other three domains. (2) The degrees of implicit associations of moral concepts with position, brightness, cleanness, and smell indicated increasing patters as age increases. Moral concepts and cleanness showed the highest degree of associations while with position showed the least degree of associations in each age group.(3) There were also age differences in the associations on each of the four domains. To be specific, adult participants showed a higher association than the other age groups on the position domain, while participants of Grade9came the second. There were no significant differences of associations among participants of Grade3, Grade5, and Grade7. On the domains of brightness, cleanness, and smell, participants of adults and Grade9had significantly higher associations than the other age groups. Similarly, participants of Grade7had higher associations than participants of Grade3and Grade5. There was no obvious different degree of associations between adults and Grade9, Grade3and Grade5.