Educational Metaphor:a Cultural Cognitive Approach

Cognitive Linguistics maintains that metaphor is one of the basic ways of thinking and the cognitive tool for talking about and understanding abstract concepts. According to its discourse, metaphors can be categorized into political metaphor, economic metaphor, educational metaphor, religious metaphor, etc. The present research focuses on educational metaphor. Existing research on educational metaphors is generally conducted from two perspectives, i.e. research on the application of metaphors in teaching and learning and research on metaphors for educational ontological elements. The former one is directed at the pedagogical value of metaphors, that is, how conceptual metaphors can be conducive to educators’ teaching and educatees’learning. Research on the application of metaphors in teaching and learning emphasizes function of metaphors as educational tools, that is, how metaphors can be utilized by educators to illustrate new knowledge or abstract concepts and by educatees to comprehend new or abstract concepts on the basis of acquired ones and construct new knowledge architecture. Plenty of current research at home and abroad has mainly been conducted from this perspective. In contrast, research on metaphors for educational ontological elements is primarily concerned with the cognitive function of metaphors. It attempts to uncover the underlying cognitive mechanism for the metaphorical construe or conceptions of educational elements, such as, educator, educatee, teaching, learning, pedagogy, educational institution, etc. Currently, quite little research has been carried out from this perspective and existing research remains to be improved since they have not explained the motivation or cognitive basis for these metaphors and why metaphorical university and cross-cultural variation exist. The present dissertation is committed to the investigation of the cognitive function of metaphors and attempts to explore and explain the cross-cultural variation and universality between educational metaphors in Chinese and English through cultural models and cognitive models.In the present research, educational metaphors mainly investigate metaphors for educators, metaphors for educatees, metaphors for teaching, metaphors for learning. We are concerned with the following four questions:(Ⅰ) What is the cognitive basis of educational metaphors? (Ⅱ) How cultural models and cognitive models influence educational metaphors in Chinese and English? (Ⅲ) What are the universality and variation between educational metaphors in Chinese and English and how can they be explained through cultural models and cognitive models?The present research emphasizes on the exploration on metaphorical university and cross-cultural variation between Chinese and English and explanation for these university and cross-cultural variation from the perspective of cognitive models and cultural models. The major findings in this dissertation are presented as follows:(Ⅰ) Educational metaphors, or EDUCATIONAL EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor, which is, in turn, a sub-metaphor of the EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor. They are hierarchized. Educational metaphors in the present researching including metaphors for educators, metaphors for educatees, metaphors for teaching, metaphors for learning are manifestations of three primary sub-metaphors of EDUCATIONAL EVENT STRUCTURE metaphor, that is, INTELLECTUAL CHANGE IS MOVEMENT, CAUSE OF INTELLECTUAL CHANGE IS FORCE OF MOVEMENT and ACTION (TEACHING/LEARNING) IS SELF-PROPELLED MOVEMENT or SELF-CONTROLLED ACQUISITION OR LOSS. These educational metaphors are cognitively or experientially based on such sensorimotor image schemas as CONTAINER schema, FORCE schema, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema, UP-DOWN schema, PART-WHOLE schema, etc.(II) There is a prototypical cognitive model for educational metaphors in both Chinese and English, that is, "Educatees are innocent at the very beginning, but then an external event, teaching, happens. The agent of this external event is educators and the patient is the educatees. This external event exerts an impact on educatees. Therefore, teaching comes into existence. For educatees. teaching is a passive action that forces them to change intellectually. In response to the action of teaching, educatees will perform, more often than not, an action of learning. Sometimes, learning may also arise from educatees initiative. An internal event will occur after the action of teaching and learning, educatees" intellectual state changes from innocence to knowledgeability." Such a prototypical cognitive model reveals that some aspects of Chinese and English embodied experience on educational event are shared, and it will constrain the construction of educational metaphors.(Ⅲ) Based on the shared embodied basis and prototypical cognitive model, some educational metaphors are universal or, at least, near-universal to Chinese and English, especially those abstract educational metaphors at general level. On the contrary, metaphors at lower level are vulnerable to variation and possibilities of variations are presented as follows:(ⅰ) Variation in the range for educational metaphors, i.e. for the same target domain, e.g. EDUCATORS. EDUCATEES. TEACHING, LEARNING, etc.. different source domains are preferred by Chinese and English; (ⅱ) Variation in the particular elaborations for educational metaphors, i.e. different instantiations are adopted in Chinese and English for the same higher level metaphor; (ⅲ) Variation in perspective of highlighting for elements in education, i.e. different aspects in educational event are highlighted in Chinese and English. Universality and cross-cultural variation of educational metaphors between Chinese and English can be explained cognitively and culturally:(ⅰ) Difference in cultural models for education, which explains why different range and different perspective of highlighting occur, (ⅱ) Difference in cognitive preference of particular source domain for the target EDUCATION, which expounds variation in range or potential source domains; (ⅲ) Difference in cultural and cognitive models for concepts that are potential source for EDUCATION, which illustrates the difference in instantiations.This dissertation explores educational metaphors from a cognitive and cultural perspective. A systematic educational metaphorical taxonomic hierarchy is drawn from educational metaphors explored in Chinese and English. Universality and cross-cultural variation of educational metaphors are identified by cross-cultural comparison between Chinese and English and explained from the perspective of cultural models and cognitive models. This research not only broadens the research perspectives of conceptual metaphor, but also enriches the contents of cross-cultural metaphorical research.