Research Into Cognitive Context In English Vocabulary Instruction

The definition of context was postulated by American anthropologist Malinowski, Bronislaw Kaspar in 1923, who was born in Poland and it symbols that the context research in his later years has shifted from anthropology to linguistics. From then on, the research field of context got rid of the linguistic boundary and was extended to the living world of human being, advocating that language roots in the base of social and cultural field, language understanding and use are interactively related and connected to each other. Therefore, linguistic field was endowed with the new life and power and researchers and language teachers started to focus on the language materials in the social and cultural contexts. The fact that context and language are equally important promoted the flourishing of language use in pragmatics, as a subarea of linguistics. Each language research paradigm predicts a particular contextual idea, providing an interpreting method for the vocabulary understanding and use. Vocabulary is an important knowledge field in the foreign language teaching, however, grammatical rules are regarded as the centre of language study and learning for the long time, while vocabulary is only regarded as the filler of grammatical structures. So Grammar-Translation teaching approach is widely accepted in the foreign language teaching nowadays although it was called into question long ago. With the development of cognitive linguistics research, language is viewed as an integral part of human's general cognitive ability, and more and more researchers and applied linguists focus their attention on exploring the possibility and feasibility of employing cognitive insights into foreign language teaching. Under this background the present thesis mainly makes an analysis of the present problems existing in the vocabulary teaching field under the guidance of traditional contextual theory and traditional foreign language teaching schools, explores the cognitive turn of contextual research based on the cognitive linguistics paradigm and further analyses the implications of cognitive contextual idea in the field of English vocabulary instruction, which gives us a new perspective for English vocabulary instruction.From the perspective of research methodology, the present thesis adopts the integral method from the cognitive linguistic ideas, viewing words as the language unit related and connected to other linguistic expressions in one way or another, internally or externally. Vocabulary understanding and use needs exploring the relationship not only between internal parts of words but also between words or between words and the outside worlds. Based on the cognitive context, vocabulary should be placed in its cognitive contexts in order to effectively understand and use vocabulary through examining the connections between words and linguistic context, between words and situational context and between words and cultural contexts in terms of cognitive contextual contents; form the angle of the cognitive representation, cognitive context is represented schemata, frame, cognitive model, script, etc., which in turn are the important categories in cognitive linguistics, so we can say that cognitive linguistics puts emphasis on the context research. According to many cognitive linguists, context consists of knowledge, such as vocabulary knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge, logical knowledge, etc. Therefore connectionism should be adopted in the field of vocabulary teaching and research, which is helpful for the learners to eradicate the decontextualization-oriented vocabulary instruction and research in the traditional linguistic study and makes learners effectively construct the encyclopedic knowledge which words provide access to and puts words into the vivid contexts from which they derive, so rich lexical networks can be extended and enriched.In the thesis, Chapter One explores the connections between English vocabulary and context on the basis of analysing the connotations of context, generalizes the features of English vocabulary from the perspective of context, and points out contextual problems existing in English vocabulary instruction based on the analytical results of questionaire. Chapter Two explores the cognitive turn of English vocabulary instruction. Firstly we discuss the cognitive shift of contextual research during the course of linguistic research development. In structuralism linguistics context is usually restricted within the linguistic structure, with a tendency of "isolationism" in the field of vocabulary instruction; Systemic-functional linguistic thought advocates that language is the social and cultural symbolic signs and meaning of words is determined by the external world, holding the view that context is correspondent with the language functions, which breakthroughs the structural contextual idea and expands the research field for vocabulary teaching and research. In the systemic-functional contextual idea, vocabulary is learned through connections to the outside world, therefore connectionism was adopted in English vocabulary teaching, however, too much attention is paid to the social and cultural world cannot solve all the problems in vocabulary instructin, so meaning of words should be explored through the interaction between the internal context and the external context depending on the subjects'cognitive ability. Cognitive linguistic research paradigm implies the cognitive research of context, advocating that vocabulary knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge are a continuum, which closely relates to each other, in other words, vocabulary understanding and interpretation is a process of conceptualizing the encyclopedic knowledge that words provide access to and words are knots through which learners (cognitive subjects) realize and understand the encyclopedic knowledge embedded in words. From the perspectives of cognitive linguistics, context is represented as category, schema, frame, script, domain, etc., which provide effective approaches for vocabulary instruction. Based on the traditional contextual ideas, cognitive context is the result of conceptualizing three dimensions, that is, linguistic context, situational context and cultural context, and cognitive context mainly consists of vocabulary knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge and logical knowledge. We tend to advocate that vocabulary learning is a process of constructing linguistic knowledge, situational knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge of vocabulary through vocabulary use. Chapter Three deals with the relationship between cognitive contextual representations and English vocabulary understanding and use, that is, vocabulary is learned and used through constructing category, schema, frame, script, domain, etc., in which vocabulary appear. Chapter Four describes three dimensions of cognitive context in which vocabulary is understood and used and the relationship between words and three dimensions of cognitive context. On the basis of former four chapters, Chapter Five explores cognitive contextual principles for the English vocabulary teaching, eximines learners'vocabulary learning strategies and analyzes teachers'cognitive contextual strategies in the course of English vocabulary teaching process based on the cognitive context, evaluates the practical values and meaning of cognitive context in vocabulary instruction through specific vocabulary teaching samples, which is possiblely be helpful and efficient for the English teachers and learners in the process of English teaching and learning.