A Study On The Cognitive Mechanism Of English Predicative Metaphor Processing By Chinese EFL Learners

Metaphor is considered not merely a figure of speech,but also a cognitive means.Over the past three decades,a large body of studies on metaphor mostly focused on nominal metaphors like My job is a jail while studies on predicative metaphors like The rumor flew through the office have not received due attention,not to mention studies from the perspective of embodied cognition.Therefore,this study is designed to investigate the psychological reality of embodied simulation mechanism in the processing of English predicative metaphors by Chinese EFL learners and to examine the effects of familiarity on English predicative metaphor processing.To achieve these purposes,the study conducted an E-prime experiment by using a two factors within-subjects design: 2(degree of familiarity: high and low)× 3(priming condition: matching priming condition(MP),mismatching priming condition(MMP),and no priming condition(NP)).45 third-year English majors from Guangzhou University were recruited to participate in the experiment and were instructed to complete a semantic comprehension task.Participants were required to press the spacebar the moment they comprehended the target predicative metaphors;however,if a picture first appeared before a metaphor was presented to them,they had to mentally simulate its corresponding action,then complete the comprehension task.Participants' reaction time(RT)and accuracy rate were recorded.A two-way ANOVA analysis method was used to analyze the data,and some major findings are summarized as follows:1.Embodied simulation mechanism does play an important part in participants' processing of English predicative metaphors;however,participants did not always activate their embodied experiences to comprehend predicative metaphors.On the one hand,the RTs under MP condition are significantly faster than the RTs under MMP condition,suggesting that participants made use of embodied simulation mechanism to facilitate their processing of English predicative metaphors.On the other hand,the main effect of the RTs between MP condition and NP condition is not significant,indicating whether to present a matching picture first or not makes no difference forparticipants to understand these metaphors and that participants did not always activate their embodied experiences to process predicative metaphors.Therefore,it is very likely that other processing mechanisms like language processing mechanism is at work.2.The degree of familiarity affects participants' English predicative metaphor processing.Overall,participants were faster to process target metaphors when sentences are highly familiar to them,demonstrating that high-familiarity promotes the understanding of English predicative metaphors.To be specific,for high-familiar metaphors,participants process them faster under NP condition than MP condition,indicating that they do not trigger their relevant bodily experiences but comprehend predicative metaphors directly through language processing mechanism.However,for low-familiar metaphors,participants process metaphors faster under MP condition than both under MMP condition and NP condition,demonstrating that their embodied experience referred to the specific concept was automatically activated when language processing system failed to meet the processing needs,embodied simulation mechanism was thus at work at this moment.To conclude,Chinese EFL learners were engaged in partial embodied simulations when they were processing English predicative metaphors.Owing to the degree of metaphor familiarity,it is probably that dual processing mechanisms work together for Chinese EFL learners to process English predicative metaphors.Specifically,they make use of embodied simulation mechanism to process unfamiliar English predicative metaphors while they resort to language processing mechanism to understand familiar English predicative metaphors.