A Study On English Vocabulary Learning From The Perspective Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Metaphor is a common phenomenon, and people use many metaphors every day. So in Western countries some scholars began to study metaphor in the early time. From 1970s until now, multidiscipline research on metaphor has been conducted in Western countries. Therefore, the connotation and denotation of metaphor have been greatly extended ever since. Not only is metaphor a kind of language phenomenon, but it is also the indispensable means for people to cognize the world and express their emotion. Consequently, metaphor becomes a heated research subject in the field of linguistics. In 1980 Lakoff and Johnson worked together and published the famous work Metaphor We Live By. This book shows clearly that metaphor is not only a kind of rhetorical device, but also a kind of cognitive way rooted in people's minds. The conceptual metaphor theory they referred to in the book is an influential theory. They claim that metaphor is one kind of cognitive activity in which people use experiences of one conceptual domain to express experiences of another domain. By communicating with each other this way, people have created many new expressions, which facilitate their better understanding of the world. From this perspective, the conceptual system is essentially metaphorical in our daily life. The conceptual metaphor theory connects the process of people's cognition with metaphor, provides more reasonable explanation for the creativity of language, and provides important evidence for English vocabulary learning.Vocabulary is a means of the mind. The more vocabulary you master, the deeper your mind will become. Vocabulary learning is always the difficult bottleneck for students to learn English. Thus, it is necessary to find a new theoretical way to learn vocabulary. Metaphor, the way for people to cognize the world, has connection with vocabulary, and will help learners understand the usage of polysemous words. Therefore, English learners can appropriately understand the conceptual metaphor theory in the process of learning vocabulary, and use the cognitive way of metaphor to master vocabulary. In this way, on one hand, learners can form their habit of thinking in English; on the other hand, they can improve the efficiency of English learning. Hence, studies on English vocabulary learning from the perspective of the conceptual metaphor theory should be a promising exploration.After introducing the definition, working mechanism and classification of conceptual metaphor theory, the thesis summarizes the significance of using the knowledge of the conceptual metaphor theory in English vocabulary learning, to prove that this method is conductive to students'improvement in the efficiency of vocabulary learning. The thesis then concludes in the empirical research that the application of conceptual metaphor to English vocabulary learning indeed helps learners improve their memory of English vocabulary as well as their ability to extend vocabulary meaning in sentential context.