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An Investigation Into The Roles Of Cognitive Ability And Language Proficiency In Chinese EFL Learners' Metaphor Comprehension And Production

Posted on:2008-01-28Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y Z WeiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360242476120Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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The study of metaphor has undergone quite a long history of over 2400 years, during which a number of competing, if not conflicting, theories about it have been advanced. Since the field of language teaching is always keen on developing the pedagogical implications of theoretical linguistics (White 2003: 147), these theories undoubtedly exercise a considerable influence on metaphor studies from the perspective of applied linguistics. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that the current applied linguistic research of metaphor should first of all make an in-depth analysis of the theories of metaphor, and then investigate what the crucial factors are and how these factors affect language learners'metaphoric competence.The present research begins with an in-depth and critical analysis of Aristotle's classical and Lakoff & Johnson'contemporary metaphor theory --- the two most influential ones (Steen 2000: 261), with the intent to shed some light on the real nature of metaphor, thus providing a theoretical framework for applied linguistic studies of metaphor. The present research is supportive of Mahon (2001) and Kittay (1989) that Aristotle's metaphor also shows a cognitive concern and that the two theories differ only in their respective emphasis on different functions of metaphor due to the different socio-historic and academic environments in which Aristotle and Lakoff & Johnson operate. Specifically, Aristotle emphasizes metaphor's linguistic or rhetorical function while Lakoff & Johnson lay stress on metaphor's function as a human cognitive mechanism. In addition, according to Richards (1965), unlike Aristotle's belief that to have a command of metaphor is a mark of genius, everyone is believed to be capable of comprehending and producing metaphor and the differences between them are in degree only. With these understandings in mind, the present research then hypothesizes that, since metaphor is fundamentally cognitive, native and foreign language learners may vary in their ability to comprehend and produce metaphors. Generally speaking, native speakers are no longer dogged by language problems, so their ability to comprehend and produce metaphors may be significantly affected by their cognitive ability. However, for foreign language learners, because of a lower level of linguistic competence in the target language, their language proficiency, may be another factor, just like their cognitive ability, that affects their metaphor comprehension and production performances. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that cognition and language proficiency might play different roles in metaphor comprehension and production because, after all, comprehension and production are two different cognitive processes. Moreover, it is hypothesized that learners might differ to some extent in metaphor comprehension and production when they are cognitively and linguistically different.To further investigate how cognitive ability and language proficiency affect the Chinese EFL learners'metaphor comprehension and production, the present research conducts an experiment from the perspective of applied linguistics. Eighty-two English major students from a foreign languages department in a technology institute in Shanghai, China participated in a series of tests. Reported in the following are some major findings obtained from the tests.1) The Chinese EFL learners'cognitive ability and language proficiency were found to be closely correlated with and significantly predict the performances of their metaphor comprehension. Meanwhile the two factors were found to be highly significantly correlated with the learners'performance of metaphor production. However, it was found that the learners'cognitive ability could account for a significant proportion of the variance of their metaphor production whereas language proficiency could not. This means that for foreign language learners, metaphor comprehension is the confluence of both cognitive and linguistic ability. On the other hand, metaphor production, though mainly a cognitive issue, is nevertheless highly correlated with language proficiency.2) When the Chinese speaking learners were divided into higher- and lower-level groups based on their cognitive level, cognition was found not to be a significant predictor of the variance of the metaphor comprehension among the lower-level groups, but it was found to have a significant predictive power for the higher-level groups'metaphor comprehension performance. Meanwhile, the research found that language proficiency could explain a significant proportion of the variance of the metaphor comprehension performance of the lower-level group, but not of that of the higher-level group. In addition, the research found that cognition could consistently account for a significant proportion of the variance of the metaphor production of both groups of students. On the other hand, language proficiency was not found to significantly predict the two groups'metaphor production performance. Therefore, the research stated that cognition and language proficiency seemed to play different roles in the comprehension of metaphor and that metaphor production was fundamentally cognition-based irrespective of the learners'cognitive ability.Similar findings were made of the metaphor comprehension and production performance when the learners were divided into the higher- and lower-level groups based on their language proficiency. The difference lies only in the fact that cognition was not found to be a significant predictor of their comprehension of metaphor for the linguistically competent learners while it was a significant one for the linguistically challenged. This finding thus suggests that when the learners were cognitively poor, they were more likely to seek help from their linguistic knowledge in order to understand metaphorical sentences.3) Language proficiency was consistently found to have a significantly strong predictive power for the comprehension of each type of metaphorical sentence while cognition could account for a significant proportion of the variance of the comprehension performances of S2 (same conceptual metaphor but different linguistic expression in the source and target languages), S3 (different conceptual metaphors used in the two languages) and S4 (words and expressions with similar literal meanings but different metaphorical meanings in the two languages) except S1 (same conceptual metaphor and equivalent linguistic expression in the two languages). In addition, cognition was consistently found to explain a significant proportion of the variance of the learners'performance with respect to the density, aptness and novelty of the metaphor generated whereas language proficiency was invariably not.Based on these findings, the research discusses some theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications the present study has for English teaching and learning in the Chinese context. In addition, it offers its limitations and suggestions for future research.
Keywords/Search Tags:cognitive ability, language proficiency, metaphor comprehension, metaphor production
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