Acquisition Of The Metaphorical Uses Of UP And DOWN By Chinese-speaking Learners Of English

Cognitive linguists hold that human conceptual system(thinking process) is built metaphorically, that is because metaphors as language expression come from metaphorical conceptual system itself. Conceptual metaphors can be defined as a systematic mapping from a concrete conceptual domain to an abstract conceptual domain. Therefore, metaphors are thinking and cognitive means. Metaphors are pervasive in our everyday life, and it is important for language learners to have competence of understanding, interpreting and outputting metaphors in written and oral communication. This competence is called metaphorical competence(MC for short), which was coined by Gardner and Winner to refer to “the capacity to paraphrase a metaphor, to interpret the rationale for the metaphor’s effectiveness, to produce metaphors appropriately in a given context, to evaluate the appropriateness of several competing metaphoric expression”. With the development of conceptual metaphors and MC, scholars began to study the relationship between MC or conceptual metaphors and second language acquisition.On the basis of Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT), the present study explored the acquisition of the metaphorical uses of UP and DOWN by the Chinese-speaking learners of English. Specifically, the study aims to answer the following three questions:1) Would the four types of metaphors exert different degrees of difficulty on the Chinese- speaking learners of English?2) Would the participants perform better on recognizing metaphors as their general language proficiency improves?3) Would the participants perform better on comprehending metaphors as their general language proficiency improves?The above questions were approached through an empirical study of the four types of metaphors of UP and DOWN. The research enrolled 140 Chinese-speaking learners of English who came from three English language proficiency levels. 50 Senior Two students from the Affiliated High School of Guizhou Normal University represented the beginning level group(BG). 45 freshmen majoring in Tourism Management of Guizhou Normal University were recruited as the intermediate level group(IG), and 45 freshmen of English majors of Guizhou Normal College were regarded as the advanced level group(AG).All the participants were required to finish a language proficiency test and two English metaphor tests. All the data collected was analyzed by SPSS 19.0. The study obtained the following major findings.Firstly, the four types of metaphor uses of UP and Down exerted different degrees of difficulties for the participants. Of all the four types of metaphors, the quantity metaphor was the most difficult, while the state metaphor was the easiest one for the participants to master. The difficulty degrees of the four types of metaphors can be presented in this order: QM > HM > TM > SM(the sign “>” means “more difficult than”).Secondly, the participants performed better on recognizing the metaphors as their general language proficiency improved. The learners with higher English proficiency performed much better than the learners of lower proficiency level. This proved that the participants’ language proficiency had great influence on the participants’ recognization of the metaphors.Thirdly, the mean difference of the three groups’ metaphor comprehension did not reach significant level. This proved that the participants’ performance on comprehending metaphors did not improve as their general language proficiency increased.The above finding sheds light on the learning mechanism of the English metaphors. It is important for English teachers to have a better understanding of the function metaphors play in our daily life and design appropriate classroom activities to enable EFL students to master metaphors in an effective way.