A Study On Figurative Collocations In ELDs

The learners' dictionaries should not only center on users' overt information needs but also focus on the cognitive factors of the overt information. The thesis tries to incorporate conceptual metaphor information into ECBDs to help Chinese EFL learners learn and produce figurative collocations efficiently.Based on conceptual metaphor theory, the present study explores three types of conceptual metaphors in figurative collocations: Orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor and structural metaphor.The present study also finds out that the conceptual transfer and misuses in figurative collocation may result from cross-cultural differences in metaphoric themes and cross-linguistic varieties in figurative collocations. The recognition of these underlined cognitive reasons of conceptual transfer in figurative collocation can help Chinese EFL learners produce figurative collocation naturally and idiomatically.In addition, the present study makes a comparison of representation of literal meaning and metaphorical meaning in five mainstream learners' dictionaries. The literal meaning and metaphorical meaning are not treated well in existing learners' dictionaries in that learners would fail to systematically and efficiently learn figurative meanings, which are components of figurative collocations.Furthermore, the present study gives five definitions of metaphorical awareness in figurative collocations. Based on the proposed five definitions, cross comparison of five mainstream learners' dictionaries are conducted.Finally the present study proposes a tentative model by incorporating conceptual metaphors to optimize representation of figurative collocation in widely-used ECBDs.