A Study Of Chinese Non-english Postgraduates’ Metaphorical Competence

In1970s and1980s, the contemporary cognitive linguistics argued that humanthought processes are largely metaphoric and that the human conceptual system ismetaphorically structured and defined; metaphor in their sense is not only a way ofexpression, but also a way of thought and action. The theory of conceptual fluencyclaims that to obtain the conceptual system in target language is the key to master thelanguage. Only when learners have enhanced their metaphorical competence, can theyacquire more native-like fluency. Based on these, metaphoric competence (MC), aterm analogous to Chomsky’s linguistic competence and Hymes’ communicativecompetence (1972), now attracts more and more attention from language researchersand, as a complement to these two competences is a much higher demand on languagelearners.The thesis reports the Chinese non-English-major graduates’ profile of L2MCand their influencing factors in EFL context. It attempts to find out:1) the status quoof non-English-major graduates’ MC;2) the possible difference in MC between maleand female non-English-major graduates;3) the correlation between learners’ MC andtheir English proficiency;4) the relationship of learners’ L1MC and L2MC. It ishoped that the major findings of the study can serve for the English learning andteaching in foreign language classroom.This study adopts the quantitative methodology. Seventy five first-yearnon-English-major graduates in their second semester in Jiangxi Normal Universitywere selected as the subjects, among which there are27males and48females fromdifferent majors. A set of test papers designed by Littlemore (2001) and the finalscores of the English language Test for the Master Degree are exploited asmeasurements of subjects’ metaphoric competence and English proficiencyrespectively. All data was analyzed by SPSS19.0, including descriptive statistics,correlation analyses, and independent and paired sample t-tests.The major findings are summarized as follows:Firstly, the descriptive statistics of the subjects’ scores of MC and its subcategoriesindicates that the metaphoric competence of Chinese non-English major graduates hasnot been developed sufficiently. Secondly, comparison between performance of maleand female subjects on MC shows that there are significant differences between malesand females in MC, specifically in ability of finding meaning and interpretation fluency but not different in originality of metaphor production.Thirdly, the general MC is substantially and positively correlated with theirEnglish proficiency, which suggests the learners’ level of metaphoric competence maypresumably vary along with English proficiency. It may rightly warrant thepedagogical approach that introduces metaphoric competence into real teachingpractice. Analytically, the first two aspects in metaphoric competence test---findingmeaning in metaphor and fluency of metaphor interpretation correlate significantlywith scores in English Examination for Master degree, but the originality of metaphorproduction does not correlate with the scores of Degree Examination. This can beexplained by the fact that producing novel metaphors to a large extent depends onones’ cognitive ability and flexibility rather than their language proficiency.Fourthly, the relationship of L1and L2MC shows that the ability to understandand produce metaphor in the L1is related to the ability in the L2. However, theproficiency of L1MC and its L1subcategories are higher than the one of L2MC andL2subcategories, but originality excluded, which suggests that the first two aspects ofMC are closely related to language form but originality is not related to language formand further proved the third finding.Based on the findings above, some implications are presented for foreignlanguage teaching and learning. First, metaphor should be taught as a subject.Metaphorical teaching should be used as a teaching approach so that learners canacquire as much metaphoric knowledge as possible. Second, the classroom teachingshould attach importance to cultivate students’ foreign language metaphoric thinkingby intentionally training their foreign language thinking way. Third, foreign languageteaching should attach importance to developing their creativity and cultivate learners’language metaphoric thinking. Learners should be encouraged to use risky figurativeexpressions by “metaphor strategy” such as word coinage and metaphoric analogy topromote their abilities of metaphor originality.