A Study Of The Effect Of Metonymic Cognition On English Proverb Acquisition

Traditionally,metonymy has been regarded as a rhetorical device all the time that emphasizes the substitution of language expressions,whose development could trace back to classical rhetoric before more than 2,000 years.With the deeper and continuous researches of cognitive linguistics,people have gradually come to realize that metonymy,like metaphor in essence,is even more fundamental than metaphor.Metonymy is not only a rhetoric and a linguistic expression method,but also an important cognitive mechanism existing in daily language communication,which directly affects our knowledge structure and thinking patterns.In recent decades,metonymy theory in cognitive linguistics has provided a new perspective for English teaching and learning,thus arousing an increasing number of attention for scholars.Among them,the combination of metonymy theory with English proverbs is also a hot topic.As we all know,the proverb is an important part of the social language and cultures,which is also the crystallization of collective wisdom of different ethnic groups in different historical periods.Those features in terms of structure and content of proverbs have certain negative influences on the English acquisition and communication and understanding abilities for Chinese learners.While metonymy is one of the most important motivations for the generation of proverbs.Therefore,the application of metonymy theory to the acquisition of English proverbs plays an important role in improving the students' English proverb level.Based on the above analysis,this thesis intends to study the general situation of students' metonymy cognitive competence and English proverbs ability as well as the close relationship between them,and then propose corresponding strategies for improving non-English major students'English proverb ability.In this thesis,150 non-English major students from Northeast Forestry University were investigated by means of questionnaire and tests.On the one hand,the purposes of this questionnaire are to find out students' interests,motivations and methods in learning English proverbs and how much they know about metonymy.On the other hand,two tests about metonymic competence and English proverb ability are designed to study and compare the grades of two tests in different groups,and make a correlation analysis of metonymic competence and English proverb acquisition ability,in order to find out the relationship between them.Eventually,the author summarizes some related strategies,revealing the application of metonymy knowledge into the process of English proverb acquisition through a deep interpretation of the results of the questionnaire and the two tests.The results are as follows:(1)most of the students can realize the important functions and roles of English proverbs in English learning and communication,so that they have great interests and motivations to memorize English proverbs.However,due to lack of metonymic cognitive competencem,it is difficult for students to combine metonymy with the acquisition of English proverbs.(2)The higher-grade group is the group with high grades of metonymic competence test,whose grades of English proverb test are relatively high,vice versa.(3)There is a positive correlation between metonymic competence and English proverb acquisition ability.Finally,based on collecting and analyzing the results of the questionnaire and the two tests,the author also puts forward some strategies to improve the metonymy competence and the English proverb ability,so as to both help students to improve the metonymy theory and enhance their understanding and application of English proverbs,and then improve their communicative competence.