The Influence Of First Language Experience,Pace Of Life And Second Language Experience On Metaphorical Perspectives Of Time

"Ego-Moving" and "Time-Moving" are two most common kinds of spatio-temporal metaphors used by people to represent the movement of time.In this research,9 experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of first language experience,pace of life and second language experience on the adoption of temporal perspectives in Chinese and English native speakers and second language learners.This dissertation mainly focuses on the following research questions:1)whether native language exerts an influence on Chinese and English speakers' time cognition;2)whether individual differences,such as the pace of life,have an impact on the time representations of Chinese and English native speakers;3)whether the temporal perspective of second language learners is different from that of native speakers,and whether it is possible to change the formers' time cognition through second language learning.In order to answer the first research question,Chapter 3(Experiment 1)used a large sample study to investigate the preferences for temporal perspectives in Chinese and English native speakers.The results showed that Chinese native speakers tended to use the "Time-Moving" perspective.while English native speakers living in British culture showed no preference for "Ego-Moving" and "Time-Movin" perspectives.This usage pattern is consistent with the occurrence frequency of two temporal perspectives in the two languages,showing the alignment of temporal language and temporal thinking.In order to answer the second research question,four experiments reported in Chapter 4 investigated the influence of life pace,a previously unexplored individual factor,on Chinese and English native speakers' temporal reasoning.The results showed that Chinese native speakers with different paces of life showed similar preference for the "Time-Moving" perspective.In contrast,native English speakers showed different preferences for the metaphorical perspective of time in the fast-paced and slow-paced living environment.Fast-paced life brings more time pressure and low initiative of individuals,so it is more likely to cause people to adopt the "Time-Moving" perspective.On the contrary,a slower pace of life means less time pressure and high initiative of the individual,so it is more likely to cause people to adopt the "Ego-Moving" perspective.Native English speakers in both American and British cultures showed the same preference.This pattern of results suggests that the pace of life exerts an influence on English speakers' ambiguity resolution in the interpretation of temporal metaphors.However,for Chinese native speakers,language may play a more important role in shaping their representations of time than individual factors,so the speed of life exerts no influence on their adoption of temporal perspectiveIn order to answer the third and fourth research questions,two experiments reported in Chapter 5 investigated the influence of spatial metaphor for time on the time cognition of Chinese advanced English learners.On the one hand,in the neutral context,Chinese advanced English learners showed the characteristics of both Chinese and English in terms of time cognition,so they demonstrated no preference for the two perspectives of time movement.This result showed that both the first language and the second language have an impact on the time cognition of Chinese advanced English learners,resulting in a mixed time cognitive style.On the other hand,Chinese advanced English learners tended to rely on Chinese temporal thinking to interpret the ambiguous temporal statement in the task which demands more difficult semantic processing.The above results showed that the influence of language on different conceptual categories might be different.and different contexts may offset the influence of language on cognitionOn the basis of the experiment results in Chapter 5.Chapter 6 further discusses the time cognition of Chinese learners whose native language is English,and the influence of different teaching methods on the acquisition of two temporal words:qian(?)" and "hou(?)".The results showed that American L2 Chinese learners of low proficiency still tended to think about time according to their native language.Thus,it indicated that the learners' mastery of Chinese time metaphor is limited to the language but without conceptual transfer.This is possiblely because the Chinese learning experience is relatively short and thus the Chinese temporal concept system has not been established in the learners' conceptual system.In order to investigated whether Chinese learners' metaphorical representations of time would change with the increase of Chinese learning experience,a teaching intervention experiment using conceptual teaching method was conducted.In this experiment,appropriate context was created and explicit knowledge teaching were used to help learners pay attention to the conceptual differences between the two temporal perspectives and establish Chinese time cognition system.The results showed that compared with the control group receiving the traditional teaching method,the experimental group receiving the conceptual teaching method could notice the difference between the two metaphorical systems.Thus,they could better master the Chinese temporal concept system.Taken together,the research shows that people's adoption of temporal perspectives is influenced by first language experience,pace of life and second language experience.It reflects the flexibility and malleability of perspective adoption in time reasoning and the high plasticity of human time cognition system.This research deepens the understanding of the relationship between language,thought and physical experience,and also provides experimental evidence for the verification and development of both the disembodied cognition and embodied cognition theories.