The Construal Mechanism Of Chinese Metaphor:An Empirical Study Based On ERPs

Metaphor is a unique language phenomenon. Studies center on it are the most among all the figurative language studies. Previous studies concerning metaphor are abundant. Traditional ideas believe that metaphor is a language or aesthetic phenomenon. The original form is “A is B.” This simple form indicates that in our daily life people tend to regard one thing as another. Since the 1980 s, Lakoff and Johnson argue that metaphor is more like a cognitive pattern rather than a simple language use. Besides, they believe than human mind is metaphorical. Based on this idea, they built conceptual metaphor system. Nowadays, people have accepted this idea and a various theoretical frameworks have been put forward.Domestic and foreign researchers have utilized ERPs to study metaphor from perspectives such as the difference between the processing of metaphor and literal meaning, hemisphere advantage, etc. Domestic studies are abundant. However, none of those has put forward a comprehensive and systematic framework which explains the construal of metaphor. Liao Qiaoyun put forward a new framework in which Chinese metaphor is understood. The present study utilizes ERPs to testify the feasibility of this framework to see whether the abstraction of possible feature happens or not during the processing of Chinese metaphor.The present study is a one-factor within-subjects design with three levels(types of discourse: literal discourse, possible feature-extractable discourse and possible feature-nonextractable discourse). It uses both RT and ERPs as indexes and consists of one experiment. In the experiment, subjects are asked to first fully comprehend a discourse combined by a paragraph and a critical sentence, then complete the lexical decision task, and at last determine whether the meaning of an assertive sentence is consistent with the foregoing discourse. According to the critical words in the critical sentences, formal experiment is conducted under two conditions: possible feature-extractable condition and possible feature-nonextractablecondition. The experiment record the RT and ERPs as subjects are performing the lexical decision task. The experiment is programmed by using the software E-prime1.1 and the ERPs results are collected, recorded and off-line analyzed by the software Neuroscan4.5. Afterwards, the outcomes are analyzed by statistic software SPSS16.0.The results of the current study demonstrate that:(1) The reaction time of the judgment of probe words is 981.91 ms in possible feature non-extractable sentence, 917.74 ms in literal sentence and 769.28 in possible feature extractable sentence. It is evident that the reaction time in possible feature extractable sentence is the shortest. The difference among accuracy of judgment in three conditions is not significant. The results is partially inconsistent with our expectation. The plausible explanation is that the metaphors used in the experiment are too familiar.The behavioral data is in favor of Liao Qiaoyun's theoretical hypothesis that the participants successfully extract the possible feature shared by the tenor and vehicle. In other words, the results prove that there is such a psychological reality of possible feature extraction in the comprehension of Chinese metaphorical language.(2) The ERPs data shows that the probe words elicit significant N400 amplitude in frontal region in which the possible feature-extractable sentence is-3.21, the literal sentence is-2.04 and the possible feature non-extractable sentence is-7.34. The results indicate that When participants are understanding the sentence, due to semantic violation,participants will actively retrieve more psychological resources in order to successfully understand the metaphor. In other word, the possible feature is extracted.(3) The N400 effect is different in the left and right hemispheres. The amplitude of literal sentence in the left hemisphere is-0.3263, while the metaphorical one is 0.5536. The amplitudes of both in the right hemisphere are-0.5274 and 0.6176 respectively. The T-test results reveals that the N400 effect is more significant in the right hemisphere, indicating that the right hemisphere plays a special role in the comprehension of Chinese metaphor. However, the detailed investigation of electrodes FP1, F3 and C3 in the left hemisphere and FP2, F4 and C4 in the right hemisphere shows that there is no significant difference between paired electrodes.This indicates that the left hemisphere is also involved in the processing of Chinese metaphor.In summary, both behavioral and ERPs data testify the psychological reality of the abstraction of possible feature when understanding Chinese metaphor.