An ERPs Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Processing Of English Metaphor

Metaphor is a common language phenomenon in our daily life. Human beingsstarted to study metaphor from Aristotle and till20century, the field of metaphoricalresearch became wilder and deeper. With the development of science and technology,Eye Movement and ERPs (Event-Related Potentials) was widely used in languageresearches. It offers new experimental tool for the cognitive science to explore the innermechanism of language.In foreign countries, many scholars did the researches about metaphor fromdifferent perspectives with the help of ERPs or fMRI (functional magnetic resonanceimaging), such as Tartter (2002), Coulson and Patten (2002) as well as Sotillo&Carretie et al.(2005). Most of the studies focused on the native language. In China,some scholars did metaphorical researches by using ERPs, such as Wang Xiaolu (2008),Zhou Haibo (2008) and Zhao Yanli (2010). However, Chinese metaphors orChinese-English metaphors were adopted as their research materials. In this paper,English metaphors were chosen to explore the mechanism of metaphor processing forChinese EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners.The thesis includes three types of sentences as the materials, i.e. Englishmetaphorical sentences, literal sentences and error sentences. The technique ERPs wasused to research the mental and brain mechanism of Chinese EFL learners whileprocessing English metaphors. The experiment was made by applying the softwareE-prime and results were collected and recorded by the software Neuroscan. Then, thebehavioral and ERPs data were treated by the off-line analysis and the outcomes wereput into the statistic software SPSS. The experiment was completed in key lab ofcognitive neuroscience and foreign language learning.The results can be concluded as follows:(1) According to the behavioral data, there are differences in reaction time andaccuracy of Chinese EFL learners and we can conclude that the order of processing difficulty for Chinese EFL learners in processing the three types of sentences is Englisherror sentences, English metaphorical sentences and literal sentences, which supportsthe two-step model.(2) The peak wave is bigger for Chinese EFL learners while processing Englisherror sentences than processing metaphorical sentences through the comparison of thedifference wave, which shows that the semantic violation of English error sentences isthe most serious in the three types of sentences.(3) According to the statistical result, there is no difference between left and righthemisphere for Chinese EFL learners in processing English metaphors, which indicatesthat both left and right hemispheres take part in the processing of English metaphors.However, the degree of activation is different and the frontal zone is activated most andthe parieto-occipital zone is least.