An Empirical Study On The Metaphorical Competence Of Chinese Non-English Majors And Its Differences Between Male And Female Students

The studies of metaphors can be traced back to the ancient times, but the traditional studies mainly regard metaphor as a language phenomenon or a rhetoric device. In the late1970s, the book Metaphors We Live By co-authored by Lakoff and Johnson signifies the beginning of cognitive metaphorology. According to the modern theories, metaphors are not only a special linguistic phenomenon, but also an important tool for human cognition. People tend to express or understand more abstract or complex concepts with something they are familiar with. Thus in routine life, people use metaphors at all times. Based on the pervasiveness of metaphors, cognitive metaphorology holds that it is of vital importance for the EFL learners to comprehend, learn and use metaphors in the target language. This capacity is called metaphorical competence.In the past decades, the Metaphorical Competence (MC) has been given much more attention by researchers, but its empirical studies are few. Although these empirical studies have discussed the relationships between learners’ metaphorical competence and their English proficiency, cognitive styles, etc., yet, the relations between MC and learners’ internal factors (age, gender, etc) are often neglected.Based on the previous researches both at home and abroad, the present research aims at studying the current status of Chinese EFL learners’ metaphorical competence and further investigating the differences between male and female students in their metaphorical competence. The research questions are:(1) What is the current status of Chinese EFL learners’ metaphorical competence?(2) Are there any possible relationships between learners’ metaphorical competence and their cognitive styles?(3) How well do male and female students perform in the Metaphorical Competence Test (MCT)? Are there any disparities between these two groups in terms of MC?The subjects of this test are68sophomores from Anhui University. The instrument of this test is the adapted MCT (metaphorical competence test) designed by Janette Littlemore (2001). All the statistics gathered are processed by SPSS17.0. The following observations are some major findings obtained from the tests.Firstly, generally speaking, the metaphorical competence of non-English majors is at a relatively low level, and it is developed in an unbalanced way.Besides, males and females have different cognitive styles. To be specific, males tend to be learners of field dependence style, while most females are of field independence style. Learners of field independence cognitive style have higher metaphorical competence than those of field dependence cognitive style. Therefore, there exists statistical correlation between the cognitive style and the metaphorical competence of EFL learners.Thirdly, the metaphorical competence of both the male group and the female group is underdeveloped. As for metaphor identification, the males’capability is almost equal to that of the females, but their proficiency of interpreting and producing metaphors is lower than their counterparts’. Besides, the present research finds that although males and females display disparities both in metaphor identification and production, only the difference in metaphor interpretation is significant statistically. To be specific, the females perform better than the males in interpreting metaphorical sentences. Differences in their majors and value systems of the male and female students may impose some influences on this test results.The present research not only enriches the theories on metaphorical competence in the Chinese context, but also offers some suggestions on how to cultivate and improve EFL learners’MC in the teaching practice.