The Gender Differences In The Construal Of Chinese Metonymy: An ERPs Study

Metonymy is a common figure of speech in our life,so numerous scholars have studied it from different perspectives like rhetoric,stylistics,linguistics and so on.The development of cognitive linguistics provides a new angle for the study of metonymy,which means metonymy is no longer seen as a traditional figure of speech,but a cognitive tool and thinking mode.Theoretically,scholars mainly investigate metonymy's nature,working mechanism,its relationship with metaphor,etc.Empirically,scholars make some researches on metonymy by using ERPs,fMRI and eye-tracking techniques.Based on the Annotation-Denotation Relevance-Inheritance Model(ADRIM)put forward by Liao Qiaoyun(2015),the present study is aimed to explore whether there exist gender differences in the construal of Chinese metonymy by utilizing ERPs technique and the participants are 18 English-majored postgraduates from Sichuan International Studies University,including 9 males and 9 females.Although gender differences in language processing have been discussed in many behavioral studies,no elecrophysiological study with Chinese metonymy has been found.The study is finished in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning in Sichuan International Studies University.The experimental materials are composed of contextual sentences,critical sentences(literal sentences,metonymic sentences or nonsensical sentences),probe words and declarative sentences.First,a contextual sentence,a critical sentence and a probe word are presented to the participant in succession.Next,the participant needs to judge whether the probe word is real or not and press corresponding key on the keyboard.Finally,a declarative sentence is displayed and the participant is required to judge whether the meaning of the declarative sentence is consistent with the previous discourse.The whole experiment is programmed with software E-prime 2.0 and the ERPs data are recorded,collected and made off-line analysis by using Neuroscan4.5.The final data are analyzed by using statistical software SPSS 16.0.The results of the experiment are as follows:(1)For females,the amplitude of P200 elicited by probe words is larger in LS condition than that in MS condition and the difference is significant [t(7)=-2.253,p=.027<.05];the N400 amplitude is larger in MS condition than that in LS condition and they show a marginal difference [t(7)=-.512,p=.071<.1].(2)For males,the amplitude of N100 elicited by probe words is larger in LS condition than that in MS condition and the difference is significant [t(7)=2.363,p=.020<.05];the P200 amplitude is lager in MS condition than that in LS condition and a marginal difference is showed between these two conditions [t(7)=1.764,p=.081<.1];the N400 amplitude in MS condition and that in LS condition manifest a very significant difference [t(7)=3.235,p=.002<.05] and a larger N400 amplitude is elicited in LS condition.(3)When cross-gender comparison is made in the construal of Chinese metonymy,the P200 amplitudes elicited by probe words for males and females are4.77 and 3.29 respectively.Males elicit a larger P200 amplitude than females and gender difference is significant [t(14)=-2.495,p=.014<.05].The N400 amplitudes for males and females are-2.26 and-4.64 respectively.Females elicit a larger N400 amplitude than males and gender difference is very significant [t(14)=-4.032,p=.000<.05].Based on the above results,we can make the following conclusions:(1)The intra-gender comparison results show that females devote more selective attention in the process of metonymic sentences than in the process of literal sentences and literal sentences facilitate the understanding of probe words more than metonymic sentences while males allocate less active attention and selective attention in the process of metonymic sentences than in the process of literal sentences and metonymic sentences have greater facilitation to the understanding of probe words than literal sentences.(2)The cross-gender comparison results manifest that females devote more selective attention when processing metonymic sentences than males and metonymic sentences have greater facilitation to the understanding of probe words in males than in females.Besides,females conduct a deeper semantic analysis in the process of possible feature abstraction.No significant difference is found between females and males in LS and NS conditions.The results in the present study give evidence to gender differences in the construal of Chinese metonymy and support the framework of “levels of processing”at the same time.