A Study Of The Effect Of English Major’s Cognitive Ability On Metaphor Comprehension

In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson published a book named“Metaphors We Live by”,which established the status of metaphor studies in cognitive approach. Theyproposed that human conceptual system was metaphorical which was metaphoricallystructured and defined. In other words, metaphor is pervasive in human’s life, either indaily communication or in academic studies. Metaphor comprehension, as onesignificant part of metaphor, fulfills and embodies working mechanism and effects ofmetaphors. Therefore, metaphor comprehension has become a considerable topicwhich has been taken seriously in many previous studies.The thesis aims to study metaphor comprehension from the perspective ofcognitive aspect and to explore the effect of cognitive ability on metaphorcomprehension. Accordingly, it employs both quantitative analysis and qualitativeanalysis in which 66 English majors involved in the study are tested on cognitiveability and metaphor comprehension respectively.A set of statistics suggest that English major’s cognitive ability can positivelyaffect their metaphor comprehension. In addition, English Majors with different levelsof cognitive ability vary in their ability of comprehending different types ofmetaphors. Concerning the comprehension of ontological metaphors, English Majorsin different cognitive ability groups are significantly different. In terms of thecomprehension of structural metaphors, there is significant difference between groupsof lower and medium cognitive ability. The same is true of the groups of higher and lower cognitive ability. However, there is no significant difference between groups ofhigher and medium cognitive ability. Regarding the comprehension of orientationalmetaphors, significant differences are found between groups of higher cognitiveability and lower cognitive ability. The result of higher cognitive ability group andmedium cognitive ability group is the same with the previous one. However, there isno significant difference between groups of lower cognitive ability and mediumcognitive ability. Those study findings can provide some enlightenment andpedagogical guidance for academic and foreign language teaching.