A Multimodal Perspective Of Verb Metaphor

The study of metaphor plays a positive role in the exploration of human verbalcommunication. There are a good number of metaphorical verbs in English, fromwhich the deep meaning of verbs is derived. So far, most of metaphor studies arefocused on noun metaphors. In contrast, little research has been done on verbmetaphors, and there are even few precedents for the study of verb metaphors fromthe perspective of multimodality. The present study focuses on the multimodality ofverb metaphors from an empiricist perspective, especially from Liang’s perspective ofmultimodality. Hopefully, it will be able to shed new light on metaphor studies. Thispaper purports to interpret and analyze verb metaphors from the perspective ofmultimodality, and to find out the effects multimodal acquisition has on the learners’understanding and using of verb metaphors. To prove that multimodal acquisitionstrengthens students’ deep understanding of metaphorical verbs and also enables themto understand and use metaphorical verbs more accurately, a randomized controlledtest will be conducted in order to compare the effect of verb-teaching with/withoutemphasizing multimodal acquisition. This study assumes three working hypotheses asfollows. Firstly, acquisition of metaphorical verbs involves acquisition of theirphenomenal meaning. Secondly, phenomenal meaning is to some extent multimodal.Thirdly, the multimodal acquisition of phenomenal meaning is part and parcel of thedepth of word knowledge, which enables learners to understand and use metaphoricalverbs more accurately.