The Comprehension Of Metaphors In Context--A Discussion On Theory Of Conceptual Mapping

According to theory of conceptual metaphor, people need to use the conceptual mapping to understand conventional metaphors in ordinary language processing. However, Keysar et al argue that the comprehension of metaphors does not need conceptual mapping in natural reading condition, only the comprehension of nonconventional metaphors need it. This thesis throws the research outcome and conclusion of Keysar et al a curve, by revising the research method of them, we tested the appearing condition of conceptual mapping in different context.This thesis concluded three experiments. Experiment 1 used the reading time index to test the conceptual mapping condition in different scenarios. The results are accordance with what Keysar et al had done in 2000.Comparing with the scenario which not concluded the metaphorical expressions, the reading of the target sentence didn't facilitied in the scenario which maintained the conventional metaphor expression. But in this thesis we doubted the conclusion in which Keysar et al proposed that the comprehension of metaphor does not need to use the conceptual mapping according the result in experiment 1.Because the this results can be interpreted in two ways: First, just as Keysar et al have said, the comprehension of conventional metaphor do not need conceptual mapping, so comparing with the scenario didn't maintain the metaphorical expression, the first didn't facilitied the understanding of the target sentence; and the second possibility is that, context that didn't have metaphorical expression itself can led readers use the information of context produce metaphor mapping. Meantime, in the scenario which contain the metaphor expression, the comprehension of the conventional metaphor did produced the conceptual mapping, so it led to in both of the scenario the reading time of target sentences didn't have the notability difference.So in experiment 2 and experiment 3, the first aim is to discuss whether in the 'no mapping ' scenario there are really existed conceptual mapping, so as to probing into the debate that whether understanding of conventional metaphor needs conceptual mapping. In experiment 2, by the methods of offline and online, we explored the mapping phenomena in three kinds of scenarios, that is, the scenario contained the conventional mataphor, the scenario didn't contain metaphorical expression, and the literal-meaningscenario. The results showed that comparing with the literal comprehension scenario, whether the scenario contained metaphorical expression or not , there existed the conceptual mapping. This showed that even the context didn't exist metaphorical expression, there are still possible of using the conceptual mapping.For thorough testify the conclusion of experiment 2,experiment 3 adopted the alike method. Comparison between the novel mapping scenario and the no mapping one the results showed that although in the novel mapping scenario it easier to use conceptual mapping than in the no mapping one, in the 'no mapping' scenario readers still can search the relational conceptual mataphor in the long-term memory, so in this condition there still have conceptual mapping.These results were interpreted as evidence for the use of conceptual mapping in the comprehension of conventional metaphor. They supported the standpoint of conceptual metaphor theory.