A Study On The Textual Coherent Function Of Conceptual Metaphor In English-Major Students’ Writing

Conceptual Metaphor Theory holds that metaphor is a mode of thinking and one of the basic cognitive instruments and that the essence of metaphor is conceptual and that metaphor is the systematic mapping from a concrete conceptual domain to an abstract conceptual domain.Written language, as a common phenomenon, plays an important role in human language activities such as culture spread, academic exploration and interpersonal relationship development, etc.. So writing is a skill indispensible to people. There is no doubt that the writer’s vocabularies and syntaxes contribute a lot to writing. Furthermore, the writer’s thinking and cognition contribute to the writing to a greater extent. Thinking not only influences choices of expressions and syntax of the writing but also determines the coherence of the whole text. Each text is about a topic. Only when a text achieves the cohesion of language expression and the coherence of language semantics can it realize its aims:disseminating information, developing interpersonal relationship, etc.. It is necessary to implement coherence-related teaching in second language writing teaching. The cohesion of language expression is the xing of the text and the coherence of language semantics is the shen of the text. Only when a text realizes xing and shen can it realize its readability, in turn, accomplishes its value.This study implements empirical research on the application of textual coherent function of conceptual metaphor in English-major students’ writing, after the qualitative analysis and the quantitative analysis of 192 texts written by English-major students, the author found that 180 of the 192 texts applied conceptual metaphor. Most of the metaphorical expressions occured in words and sentences; Only 3 participants applied conceptual metaphor at textual level. This research indicated that most of these students had quite a good command of conceptual metaphor, but there is still a long way to go before they can apply conceptual metaphor creatively and creatively. This research is expected to be able to provide certain reference and enlightenment for the further research and application of conceptual metaphor, especially for the application of conceptual metaphor to English teaching. Meanwhile, it is expected that this research can make English teachers and English learners recognize the role of conceptual metaphor in textual coherence, thus consciously apply conceptual metaphors to achieve textual coherence, in order to effectively convey information.