The Selection Mechanism In The Processing Of Metaphor Comprehension

In the metaphor comprehension's cognition research, some scholars believe that the strategy people using to understand metaphor is comparing processing, on the contrary, some other scholars believe that it is a classify processing. In 2005, Gentner propose a theory named "Career of Metaphor". She attempts to make the opposite viewpoints to unify. She thinks that the novel metaphor needs comparing process, but the conventional metaphor needs the classification process, and along with the metaphor from the novelty to the conventional development, we experience one transformation from comparing to classify processing. She also believes that the metaphor conventional level is the main factor that affects the transformation of processing strategy. Afterward, some scholars propose the different viewpoints. They claim that the most important factor that influences metaphor understanding processing strategy chosen is not the conventionality, but the aptness. Also has some scholars believe that the influencing factor is the polysemy.Based on the present research situation, the paper has two research goals. First, under Chinese language environment, how suitable can "Career of Metaphor" also be? Second, which is the most important factor that affects the metaphor understanding processing strategy chosen, conventionality, aptness or polysemy? Therefore, we have carried on three formal experiments.In the first two experiments we resume "Career of Metaphor" is fit for Chinese metaphor material. And the experimental result has confirmed our viewpoint that conventionality is the key factor in the choosing of metaphor understanding processing strategy. Moreover, the third experiment's data analysis demonstrated that the functions of the aptness and the polysemy has not been confirmed.This research draws the following conclusions: First, in Chinese metaphor comprehension, "Career of Metaphor" still has the very big Usability. Second, the most important influencing factor of Chinese metaphor understanding processing strategy chosen, is conventionality, but not aptness or polysemy. Third, after the learning phase, if the target term of Chinese novel metaphor is highly abstractive, it will promote the processing strategy chosen to the classification transformation. Finally, Chinese metaphor's grammatical form, can not be regarded as the independent factor that influence understanding processing strategy chosen. We can't consider the grammatical form as an independent influencing factor in the process of Chinese metaphor comprehension.