The Study Of Effects Of The Conceptual Metaphor On Vocabulary Learning In Senior High Schools

As opposed to the viewpoint of the traditional metaphor theory that metaphor is a deviation of language, an ornament of language or a figure of speech, the conceptual metaphor theory holds that metaphor is pervasive in everyday language and it is a cognitive phenomenon, a way of thinking, in which people always explain and learn the abstract concepts in terms of the concrete ones. It is its cognitive mode that links language, which is also outcome of human beings' cognitive activities, to metaphor. Hence the study of the conceptual metaphor has gained more and more popularity in applied linguistics, especially in language teaching and learning, in the past several decades.The thesis would like to make a theoretical and empirical study of its application to the field in order to help the senior middle school students find a better learning strategy to meet the requirement of the Standard of the New English Curriculum that they are supposed to have a vocabulary capacity of 3500 to 4500 by their graduation.First by making a critical review of the development of metaphor theories, expatiating the nature, the features, the working mechanism and the classification of the conceptual metaphor, retrospecting the literatures about its application to vocabulary teaching and learning at home and abroad, the thesis has found achievements and limitations of the predecessors' assertions about the application of the conceptual metaphor to vocabulary; then, by illustrating the omnipresence of metaphorical expressions in the senior high school, anatomizing the metaphorical characteristics of vocabulary in the senior high school, and making an one-semester-long empirical study to examine two hypothesises, the thesis comes to the conclusion that the application of the conceptual metaphor can enhance the senior middle school students' vocabulary learning.Finally, in addition to the display of its limitations, the thesis put forwards three tentative suggestions on how to raise metaphor competence in the practical teaching and learning.