An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Enhancing Metaphorical Awareness On Economic Discourse Reading

Metaphor has attracted the attention of many scholars for several thousands of years since ancient Greek times. Traditional views regard metaphor as a figure of speech and enclose it in literary works. However, with the publication of the epoch-making Metaphors We Live By in 1980, in which conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) is initiated, an increasing number of scholars have accepted the idea that metaphor is fundamentally conceptual rather than linguistic in nature. The theory argues that innumerable metaphorical expressions in language can be traced back to limited types of conceptual metaphors, which may play an active role in language learning.This thesis, based on CMT, aims at exploring the relationship between the enhanced metaphorical awareness and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) economics learners'reading performance. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis: enhanced metaphorical awareness can facilitate ESP economics learners'specialized reading. Two groups majoring in business English from the same university, 62 participants in all, were involved in the experiment. One group (n=31) receiving the training treatment was set as the experimental group while the other (n=31) as the control group. The experiment was conducted in the following two stages:â‘ three weeks were devoted to developing and enhancing the metaphorical awareness of the participants in the experimental group;â‘¡all the participants in the two groups were required to finish the same test paper in one hour. T-test for independent samples is employed to compare the achievements of the two groups and all experimental data are analyzed with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Statistical evidence show that participants in the experimental group performed better than their counterparts in the control group, which justifies the hypothesis mentioned above.On the basis of statistical evidence,some conclusions drawn from the research are as follows:First, enhanced metaphorical awareness may facilitate ESP economics learners'...