An Empirical Study On Chinese Preschoolers’ Metaphoric Competence

Studies on metaphor have lasted for over two thousand years. In the western rhetoric field,metaphor was originally regarded as a rhetorical device in human beings’ languages. During the long history of metaphor’s development, a large number of theories were put forward by linguists and philosophers successively. In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson proposed the famous conceptual metaphor theory. This theory supports that metaphor is not only a decorative device but also a way of thinking the world. From then on, studies on metaphor turned to a new stage from a cognitive perspective. Metaphor plays an indispensable rule in people’s language and behavior. In this light, metaphoric competence is considered as important as our linguistic and communicative competences. Naturally enough, in order to know human beings’ developmental tendency of metaphoric competence better, it is of great significance to study young children’s metaphoric competence. Although many abroad and domestic studies on children’s metaphoric competence have been done, study on Chinese preschoolers’ metaphoric competence upon conceptual metaphor theory is rare, especially on comparisons between conceptual metaphors with other kinds of metaphors and comparisons among different conceptual metaphor types.This study is based on conceptual metaphor theory, aiming at investigating the current status of mandarin-speaking preschoolers’(aged from 3 to 6 years old) metaphoric competence.There are total 123 participants(63 female, 60 male) randomly selected from an ordinary kindergarten. The research consists of two well-designed tasks: the picture matching part and the sentence comprehension part. All the test items are chosen from early studies and authoritative websites, and then modified in a more appropriate way using children’s words. As an empirical study, it verifies the following research hypotheses: 1). Chinese preschool children have metaphoric competence at an early age. 2). Different age levels or genders have a significant influence on mandarin-speaking preschoolers’ metaphoric competence. 3). Different metaphor types have an important effect on Chinese preschoolers’ performance.All the data collected are transferred according to scoring criteria and then analyzed by computer statistic software SPSS 16.0. Answers to five specific research questions upon research hypotheses are evidently presented with discussions respectively. The major findings of the current study are listed as follows: 1). Chinese preschoolers could partly identify and understand metaphors at an early age. The minimum age of participants in this study is three years old. And the research result indicates that three years old children could show a certain amount of metaphoric competence. 2). Age is an important factor which could have significant effect on children’s metaphoric competence. The elder the children are, the better performance they have.It can be seen that the development of children’s metaphoric competence is a continuous and increasing tendency with growth of age. 3). The factor of gender can be neglected in the study because it hardly causes statistic difference on children’s performance. 4). On one hand, young children have different performances on different metaphor types from a broad sense, for example, comparison between conceptual metaphors against configurational metaphors. On the other hand, they show no obviously different performances among the three subdivided conceptual metaphor types(orientational metaphor, ontological metaphor and structural metaphor) within the range of conceptual metaphor theory. A description on main characteristics of young children’s metaphoric competence follows the foregoing analysis and discussions.This thesis offers some preschool education suggestions upon the present situation of Chinese young children’s metaphoric competence. It makes a humble contribution to mandarin-speaking preschoolers’ metaphoric competence studies. In addition, it gives some supports to the conceptual metaphor theory to some degree. Namely, metaphor is pervasive in our daily life and functions not only as a rhetorical device in language but also a way of thinking in minds.