Chinese EFL Learners’ Mental Representation Of English Power Words

The embodied cognition theory posits that human cognition originates in theinteraction between one’s body and environment, depending on one’s physiologicalstructure and neural activity. Lakoff and Johnson claimed that in the interaction with theoutside world, one’s spatial experience is the most frequent and direct, vertical locationsin particular. The representation of abstract concepts, like power relation, wouldautomatically activate the vertically spatial metaphor, in which the source domain ofvertical locations is mapped onto the abstract target domain of power relation.It is demonstrated that in both Chinese and English, there are many wordsindicating the vertically spatial information which can be used to express the abstractconcept, power relation. For example, in Chinese, we can find shang ji, shang bin,shang liu, shang si, shang feng, shang di, tai shang huang, xia ji, xia shu, xia shi, xiasan lan, xia li ba ren, to name but a few. In English, we can find Your Highness. Heclimbed high in the social ladder. He is lower in the echelon. Thomas W. Shubert (2005)and Kikin Zanolie et al.(2012) used the E-prime and ERPs experimental technologiesrespectively, testifying that even in the absence of morphemes indicating the verticallyspatial information, the relation of correspondence was also displayed. Thus, therepresentation of power words would trigger the vertically spatial metaphor. However,their studies only focused on the native English speaker. There have been no relevantempirical studies targeted on the native Chinese speaker. Considering this, this studyaims at the Chinese EFL learners’ representation of English power words. Besides, thisstudy is also designed to verify whether the language proficiency would influence therepresentation of these words. Thus, three research questions are followed:(1) What isthe characteristic of the representation of English power words for Chinese HLs?(2)What is characteristic of the representation of English power words for Chinese LLs?(3)What is the difference between the Chinese HLs and LLs in representing the Englishpower words? In order to explore these questions, this study chooses25English wordsindicating a powerful individual, and25indicating a powerless individual, as well astheir Chinese equivalents as the research materials. What’s more, none of the wordscontains any morpheme implying vertically spatial information. A response timeexperiment is taken upon15English major graduates, and15non-English majorundergraduates from Sichuan International Studies University in the Key Lab ofCognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning. The response time andaccuracy rates are recorded and SPSS16.0is applied to analyze the date.The statistics indicate that (1) for Chinese HLs, the representation of the Englishpower words would activate the vertically spatial metaphor. Moreover, the interactiveeffect between power and position is significant, F(1,14)=14.24, p=0;(2) for ChineseLLs, the representation of the English power words would also activate the verticallyspatial metaphor. However, the interactive effect between power and position is notsignificant, F(1,14)=.125, p=.725;(3) HLs perform better than LLs in representing thepower words, t=-3.562, p=.001. Therefore, it is evidenced that the L2learner’srepresentation of the English power words is generally consistent with that of Chinesepower words, which conforms to the prediction of the embodied metaphor theory. Inaddition, the language proficiency exerts influence upon the representation of theEnglish power words.