A Study Of Metaphorical Discourse Competence Of Chinese Intermediate-advanced EFL Learners Based On Comparable Corpora Of English Speeches

Metaphorical Competence(hereafter MC)has been a focal issue of significant interface value in the applied linguistic studies of metaphor theory and the interdisciplinary approaches to Cognitive Linguistics and English as foreign language teaching and learning.While in recent years,with the cognitive studies of metaphor theory developing a trend of “social turn”(Low,Todd,Deignan& Cameron,2010),researchers have transferred their interests and focus to employ metaphor as an tool or a medium to implicitly observe how people convey their thoughts,feelings and life values in real discourse(Cameron & Malsen,2010).Accordingly,a new orientation for the study of MC has emerged: to research the capacity of language learners’ use of metaphor in actual oral or written discourse,different from traditionally taking metaphor recognizing,comprehending and interpreting as the major operational goals guided by theory and methods of Cognitive Psychology(e.g.Low,Littlemore&Koester,2008;Littlemore,Krennmayr,Turner& Turner,2014,Karlsen,Geva& Lyster2016,etc).Upon the review of the current studies on MC,I propose that there are two main issues unsatisfyingly dealt with so far: 1)some hypotheses and generalizations remain obscure or controversial and need more empirical studies to verify,e.g.as for the core role that MC assumes to play in communicative language ability(Littlemore & Low,2006b),what is the degree of universality of metaphorical expressions in EFL learners’ discourse production as compared to English(near-)native speakers and with its contribution to meaning conveyance in language communication;how “conceptual fluency” and “unnatural degree of literalness”(Danesi,1992,1995)are exactly manifested,the characteristics supposed to be inherent with MC and mark the difference between non-native speakers and native speakers;in what ways is that the conceptual competence and the conceptual knowledge are as important as grammatical and communicative competence(Kecskes,2000;Danesi,2010);is MC is essentially a language or a cognitive problem,or an issue of sociocultural knowledge and experience or awareness of use?;in interactive and productive discourse,why it is assumed that MC demonstrates a speaker’s level of “conceptual fluency” and creative and critical thinking ability(e.g.K?vecses,2010b);the teachability of MC and to what extent it can be taught;2)since to study MC specifically on the discourse level in actual oral or written production is a newly emerging research issue,its theoretical framework and research methods are yet to be substantially established,supplementedormodified.Hence,we are considering e.g.how a new concept would look like if we tentatively put forward a notion particularly to generalize the study of MC on the discourse level and a workable research guideline for that.Setting the aforementioned issues and aspects as the main goals,this dissertation,first of all proposes a concept of “Metaphorical Discourse Competence”(hereafter MDC)by comprehensively tracking the clues of the theories concerning metaphor and discourse studies(cf.“Applied linguistics research framework of metaphor theory”(Cameron,2008),“Metaphor-led dynamic discourse analysis framework”(Cameron et al.,2009),“lexical pragmatic theory of metaphor”(Wilson&Carston,2006)and“ ‘language-thinking-communication’ three dimensions neo-contemporary metaphor theory”(Steen,2008).This study defines the proposed concept both on theoretical and operational levels and constructs the research framework,based on which three specific research questions are located as the entry points to approach the essential constructs of MDC and to provide the evidence for those incompletely expounded aspects about the hypotheses and generalizations mentioned above.The study selects“Public Speaking” as its sample discourse type.The main reason for this is that it is generally regarded as the most sophisticated form of language communication(Bizzell& Herzberg,2001)and it carries both spoken and written discourse features.A EPSCC is established consisting of orally delivered(with transcription supported)speeches collected from different groups of Chinese EFL learners at intermediate-advanced level(the research groups)and English(near-)native speakers(the reference group).Speech topics are all popular social issues categorized into six broad themes or topic areas regarding politics,economy,society,education,environment and technology.The study applies the ideas and methods of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysisand Corpus Linguistics research of metaphor(Stefanowitsch,2006).The most challenging step(e.g.Semino,2016)in metaphor identification,extraction and calculation in discourse is semi-automatically supported by the Wmatrix Corpus linguistic tool(Rayson,2008;Koller,Hardie,Rayson& Semino,2008)and MIP(VU)(Steen,et al.,2010).The study conducts both quantitative and qualitative analysis as well as discourse analysis and makes systematic comparisons of their similarities and differences between the research groups and the reference group,providing a large amount of solid data and facts with in-depth descriptions and analysis of the regularities and characteristics of metaphor use of both EFL learners and English(near-)native speakers.The study has found out: 1)with the discourse type “Public Speaking” as an exemplar of language communication form,the metaphor density in the discourse produced by both Chinese EFL learners at intermediate-advanced level and English(near-)native speakers respectively as well as the semantic contributory relative frequency of metaphor in the discourse(involving different discourse themes,and metaphor types);2)the propensity of the use of different types of conceptual domains,including the degree of its abundance,the metaphor power hierarchy and the variation across different discourse themes;3)the extent and the ways that the potential patterns of metaphor use are demonstrated in the discourse,namely metaphor framing,metaphor scenario/story,metaphor clusters,metaphor chains and creative metaphors.The results provide the empirical evidence to elevate the clarification of those inexplicitly elucidated aspects of MC and more importantly,the whole process of the study may set a theoretical and empirical ground for researching MC on the discourse level in particular.This study,in general,demonstrates that most of Chinese EFL learners,even after years of learning or being certified with language proficiency tests that have reached the intermediate or advanced level tend to be inefficient in MDC and lack of awareness of metaphor use.Such a fact should not be underestimated because it tends to pose as a barrier to block the learners to step through the“fossilization” or “learning plateau”(Selinker & Lakshmanan,1993)in their oral and written ability development.While simultaneously reflecting some of bottlenecks confronting our Chinese EFL learners in their oral or written competence such as richness in content,coherence in logic,critical and creative thinking ability,I personally believe there is a connection as to that probing into the issues of MC may hopefully explain the hindrance for EFL learners’ continuing development in language ability and may offer a plausible solution.Ultimately,MDC not only represents the linguistic competence but also manifests language users’ cognitive abilities such as cross-domain mapping,image connecting,associating and creating,analogical reasoning as well as the storage of sociocultual knowledge and experience,the elements of which accord with the objectives set for EFL learners majoring in English and other foreign languages as well: with higher language proficiency,more critical and creative thoughts,richer knowledge and wider perspectives.