The Spatial Metaphor Of CSL Affective Concepts:Perspective From Embodies Cognition

Embodied cognition is an emerging psychological research field that studies the relation between physical experience and mental function.There are two opposite views in the psychological research on how concepts are represented in the brain:one is disembodied cognition,and the other one is embodied cognition.From the perspective of disembodied cognition,human conceptual system can exist independently of physical perception,while human physical experience is not enough to construct the conceptual system.In contrast to the disembodied cognition,embodied cognition considers that concepts are acquired through the physical sensorimotor,and we perceive the world and construct concepts via our bodies.In the field of embodied cognition,metaphor is not only a rhetorical device,but also an important way of conceptual representation.The spatial concept is the most familiar and basic conceptual category for human beings.According to the view of embodied cognition,in all metaphors,spatial metaphor occupies a central position in the formation of human cognition and abstract conceptual system(Lakoff&Johnson,1980).People usually use the spatial concept to express the abstract concept category including power and morality,such as "noble","dirty","upper class" and "lower class" that are inseparable from the space concept.Starting with the emotional concept,the paper intends to study the spatial metaphor of Malay native speakers use the emotional concepts of L2 Chinese and their mother tongue.The current research on embodied cognition adopts different paradigm whose views are confirmed in different languages,different groups and different cultures,which indicates that the embodied cognition has generally achieved cross-language consistency.However,at present,the research on embodied cognition is mainly aimed at native speakers both domestic and abroad and the fewer on the second-language speakers.In terms of second language of Chinese,there is little research on this field now.The research on second language involves in many factors including culture and second language level.Compared with the mother tongue,factors to be considered in the study of second language are more complicated with more complex experimental results.As for the subject,the second language requires a deeper processing than mother tongue.Then,does the vertical and horizontal spatial metaphor widely used in the study of mother tongue language exist in the processing of the second language concept?If so,are the second language learners based on the mother-tongue thinking or the second-language thinking when processing the Chinese emotional concept?How deep is the subject influenced by the culture in the study of second language?How do cultural factors and physical experience work together on the spatial metaphor of abstract concepts?These questions are worth exploring.Therefore,regarding the Malay native speakers as the research object,the paper intends to proceed with the following questions:whether there are vertical or horizontal spatial metaphors in Malay native speakers in the second language environment when using the second language of Chinese to process emotional concept.If so,what is the difference from the experimental result of native language?If not,considering the cause of this result.Based on the research result,the paper considers whether Malay native speakers processing Chinese emotional concepts are influenced by the mother tongue or the second language on earth,and how cultural factors and physical experience work together on the spatial metaphor of second-language speakers’ emotional concept.Based on the above considerations,the paper adopted the experimental paradigm of Ouellet et al.(2010)investigating the vertical and horizontal spatial metaphors of Malay native speakers when using Chinese and Malay to process emotional concepts through two experiments,and it analyzed the cause of experimental results from the cross-language and cross-cultural perspectives.In the first experiment,Chinese was used as a material to investigate whether vertical and horizontal spatial metaphors existed when Malay native speakers processed the emotional concepts.The experimental results showed that under the condition of vertical space,the reaction time of metaphor inconsistency was significantly longer than that of metaphor consistency,while under the condition of horizontal space,the difference between metaphor inconsistency and metaphor consistency was not obvious.In other words,vertical spatial metaphor of"goodness is up;badness is down" existed,while horizontal spatial metaphor of "goodness is right;badness is left" or "goodness is right;badness is not always left" that existed extensively in the previous study of native language disappeared.In order to further explore whether the results were caused by the influence of mother tongue,I conducted the second experiment.The second experiment adopted the same experimental procedure as the first one except that the experimental material was replaced by Malay.The experimental results showed that vertical and horizontal spatial metaphors of"goodness is right;badness is left" or "goodness is right;badness is not always left" existed.The research results of the mother tongue are basically same as those of the predecessors.However,for the disappearance of horizontal spatial metaphor in the second language,I have made some guesses about the reasons based on the following two points.First,when using the second language to process the concepts,the subject is influenced by not only physical experience but also cultural factors and proficiency in second language,which may work together to shape the spatial metaphor representation of emotional concepts.Second,as for the abstract concept of emotion,vertical space is a strong spatial metaphor,while horizontal space is a weak spatial metaphor.In short,in the perspective of cross-language,the paper studies the spatial metaphor of emotional words from second language and native language,and it explores the causes of the experimental results.However,since there is few studies on the second language of embodied cognition,the research on emotional words’ spatial metaphor of the second-language speakers in this paper belongs to tentative exploration.Therefore,some considerations on experimental results require more empirical research on the second language.