METAPHOR AND ITS ROLE IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY LEARNING AND TEACHING

CONTENT 1 INTRODUCTION 2 DEVELOPMENT 2 1 Definitions of metaphor 2 3 Functions of metaphor 2 2 1 Naming function 2 2 2 Cognitive function 2 2 3 Symbolic function 2 3 Kinds of metaphor 2 3 1 Living metaphors 2 3 2 Faded metaphors 2 3 3 Dead metaphor 2 4 Role of metaphor in English vocabulary learning and teaching 2 5 Implications for English vocabulary learning and teaching 3 CONCLUSION 1 2 2 3 3 5 4 4 5 5 7 5 6 6 6 7 7 9 9 10 10 CONTENT 1 PORTFOLIO 1 INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTI.

HA NOI, VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FALCUTY OF POSTGRADUTE

METAPHOR AND ITS ROLE IN ENGLISH VOCABULARY LEARNING AND TEACHING

SEMANTICS

(FINAL ASSIGNMENT)

Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm Student: Nguyễn Thị Phương

Class: K18C

Deadline: 28 / 06 /2010

Ha Noi June / 2010

1 INTRODUCTION

2 DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Definitions of metaphor

2.3 Functions of metaphor

2.2.1 Naming function

2.2.2 Cognitive function

2.2.3 Symbolic function

2.3 Kinds of metaphor

2.3.1 Living metaphors

2.3.2 Faded metaphors

2.3.3 Dead metaphor

2.4 Role of metaphor in English vocabulary learning

and teaching

2.5 Implications for English vocabulary learning and

teaching

3 CONCLUSION

1-2

2-3

3-5 4 4 5

5-7 5-6 6 6-7 7-9

9-10

10

1 PORTFOLIO 1: INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH

IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

2 PORTFOLIO 2: EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

3 PORTFOLIO 3: ETHNOGRAHIC RESEARCH

4 PORTFOLIO 4: SURVEY RESEARCH

5 PORTFOLIO 5: CASE STUDY

6 PORTFOLIO 6: ACTION RESEARCH

7 PORTFOLIO 7: CONDUCTING A RESEARCH

PROJECT

8 PORTFOLIO 8: PREPARING AND WRITING A

THESIS AND UNDERTAKING A VIVA

1 INTRODUCTION

Metaphor is both a phenomenon of language and of thought It plays an important role in humans’ understanding the world, the forming of the conceptual structure and the development It is a higher stage of cognitive development Metaphor is common and pervasive not just in English but in all languages and across all dialects and it appears in literary as well as everyday language Studies

of metaphor have taken on an absolutely new look over the past decades,

evidenced by Metaphors We Live by collaborated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980),

which has rocked to the core studies of metaphor in linguistic field, attributing to their interpretation of metaphor system in the line of cognition named modern metaphor and proposes that metaphor is a matter of thought and action rather than

a device of poetic imagination and the rhetoric flourish In addition, Kovecses (1986) presents a demonstration that emotions such as anger, pride and love are conceptualized structure in everyday language All these studies illustrate the cognitive idea of metaphor, for instance, metaphor mediates human understanding

and world view (Lan, 2005) However, there have not been many studies of

metaphor in foreign language learning and teaching As a teacher of English, I see that metaphor plays a really important role in learning and teaching foreign

language, especially vocabulary So I decide to choose the topic “Metaphor and

its role in English vocabulary learning and teaching” In this paper, I will mainly

focus on the review of metaphor and its role in vocabulary learning and teaching

Firstly, the paper introduces the review of metaphor that consists of definitions of metaphor, functions of metaphor and kinds of metaphor And then the paper discusses the role of metaphor in extending the senses of the same word forms, conceptualizing abstract vocabulary categories and word forming.

2 DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Definitions of metaphor

The term metaphor that comes from the Greek means “transference” As it

is stated by Vo Dai Quang (2003: 33), metaphor is “word meaning transference based on similarity between two things as regards function, character, size, shape, age, colour, ect.” Take the following example.

E.g Tom is a snake.

In this example, the word “snake” has a negative connotation as snakes are

thought to be very poisonous or dangerous to people So this meaning is transferred to refer to the character of a person (Tom) to imply that he is a dangerous person The similarity in this case between an animal (snake) and a person (Tom) is about the character So this definition of metaphor is very clear and detailed

However, the question “why do people have to use such an implicit way to convey the idea” This is clearer in the definition given by Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995: 734) in which metaphor is defined as “the imaginative use of a word or a phrase to describe somebody/something as another object in order to show that they have the same qualities and as to make the description more forceful” This definition is not as detailed as the

above-mentioned definition about the association of similarity but it takes the use and the

effect of metaphor into consideration If we say “Tom is a dangerous person”, it is not as forceful to the hearer as we say “Tom is a snake” Also, metaphor can

convey the imagination of the language users so it is obviously more persuasive and effective in communication

From the linguistic point of view, metaphor is defined as “an extension in the use of the word beyond its primary meaning to describe referents that bear similarities to the word’s primary referent” (Language – its structure and use,

1994) The term “extension” refers to the meaning of the word that can be

expanded beyond its literal meaning So metaphor here is treated as a means of creating and extending meaning to describe other referents which are similar to the word’s primary referent Look at the above example again The primary referent of

the word “snake” is one kind of animal and in this metaphor, it refers to another

referent that is a dangerous person (Tom) This can be done on the basis of the resemblance between the two referents

According to Barcelona (2000: 3), “metaphor is the cognitive mechanism whereby one experiential domain is partially mapped or projected onto a different experiential domain so that the second domain is partially understood in terms of the first one” So metaphor in this definition is understood as a conceptual

projection whereby one experiential domain is understood in terms of another In the above example, the character of a person (Tom) is likened and understood in terms of a character of a snake

In general, metaphor discussed above is viewed from different angles To put it simply, it is the way we call one object by the name of another because we compare these objects and find some common features between them

2.2 Functions of metaphors

Metaphors are of various values and functions in language, however, in this study only three basic functions given by Dinh Trong Lac (1994:53), a Vietnamese linguist, are mentioned According to his opinion, there are three basic functions of

namely naming, cognitive and symbolic functions and basing on this he can group

metaphors together

2.2.1 Naming function

The first function of metaphors is to name things This is only the technical

means to use the ready-made vocabulary to give names to other things basing on the resemblance between them For example, the lowest part the mountain is called the foot of the mountain as the foot on the human body is the lowest part These metaphors are of almost no or very little rhetoric value but they can reflect the way in which things in the world are viewed together These metaphors are

only intended to give names to things basing on the experience with the existing vocabulary

2.2.2 Cognitive function

The second function of metaphors is to cognize or to conceptualize things.

Here the metaphors do not give new names to things but conceptualize them in terms of another Moreover, metaphors operates between two domains, one domain is conceptualized in terms of another For example, in the domain of weather, when it is sunny, the sun is shining and brings pleasant weather that can

make people happy and comfortable So the word “sunny” has positive

connotation and it is transferred to talk about the mood of people as in the following example

E.g By the time he reached the outskirts of Cambridge, David was in a sunny mood.

That is, David felt very happy and optimistic In this way, the human mood

is conceptualized and understood under the words about weather These metaphors are also conventional and of little rhetoric effect

2.2.3 Symbolic function

The last function of metaphors mentioned here is to symbolize things This

function is commonly thought to be the conventional function of metaphors For instance, the flower often symbolizes for the beauty So it is often compared to the woman’s beauty

E.g Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour.

In this example, the flower is compared to the beauty of people that will devour like the flower Metaphors of this group reflect the imaginative and creative way that individuals judge and comment things, which can make their language more expressive and more persuasive They are very popular in poetic language

On the whole, metaphors carry three major functions in language which are

naming, cognitive and symbolic functions.

2.3 Kinds of metaphors

Metaphors, like any other stylistic devices, can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness As it is stated by Nguyen Hoa (2004: 109), basing

on the degree of unexpectedness, there are three main types of metaphors namely

living metaphors, faced metaphors and dead metaphors.

2.3.1 Living metaphors

Metaphors which are unexpected and quite unpredictable are called living metaphors In these metaphors the word has an unusual metaphorical sense that is easily recognized by the hearer They are created and used by individuals

E.g You are my sun.

It can be seen that the sun lights our earth by day, which can makes people’s life brighter and happier So when a person who is thought to make the other’s life brighter and happier is considered “the sun” The metaphors of this type are also called creative or poetic metaphors as it reflects the creative use of language and they are attached to the symbolic function as discussed above and are especially used in literature and poetry They are not common in everyday language usage

Sometimes, they are called genuine metaphors because it is the common sense

when people talk about metaphors and they have great rhetoric effect on the hearer

2.3.2 Faded metaphors

Faded metaphors are those which have lost their freshness because of long and traditional use and become habitual in daily language usage For instance,

gold is one kind of very valuable material and the adjective “golden” denotes something made of gold And when people say “golden youth”, they imply that the

youth in a person’s life is also as valuable as gold Metaphors are so common in everyday language that they are sometimes not felt as metaphors These metaphors can cause polysemy of so many words in language Among the functions discussed, they are attached to the naming and cognitive functions

2.3.3 Dead metaphor

Dead metaphors are those whose metaphorical sense is not felt at all because they have lost their indirect meaning and are only used figuratively For

example, the word “capital” in English used to mean the head which are

considered as the most important part on the human body So it was metaphorically used to refer to the most important city or town of a country which

is usually the centre of government But now the word “capital” is not used

literally as the head of the human body but only means the capital of the country

as in the sentence: “Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam” These metaphors are not

many in language In fact, they are different or almost impossible to be recognized

as metaphors

Generally, there are three types of metaphors which are living, faded, and dead metaphors.

2.6 Role of metaphor in vocabulary learning and teaching

2.6.1 Extending the senses of the same word forms

According to Fachun Zhang & Jianpeng Hu (2009 P 80), conceptual

metaphors provide us with the possibility of seeing one thing in terms of another This feature enables us to link the senses of a lexical item in one domain to its related metaphorical senses in another domain, thus extending the senses of the

same word forms For example, the word ‘shaky’ in the building domain can be

used in the theory domain with the linking conceptual metaphor theories are

buildings or the word ‘remote’ in the distance domain can be used in the

relationship domain with the linking conceptual metaphor relationship is distance

and most importantly, a large number of words can be learned systematically in this way

In pedagogical practice, teaching of extending the meanings of lexical items can be conducted in the following way To begin with, the teacher can give such an example as follows:

E.g Jim and Lily are lovers while Jim abandoned Lily and fell love with another girl, so Lily felt wounded by Jim’s betrayal and she had never been stabbed in the back like that before She was badly hurt.

In teaching sentences of such kind, the teacher can guide the students to find the two domains For instance, the teacher can guide the students to find the

two domains by asking questions like “can wounded be used on other occasions and what is the normal use of hurt” Gradually, the students would be guided to the physical domain of the words wounded and hurt The expected conceptual

metaphor to be established is negative emotions are physical pains Therefore, a mapping relation like the following can be established

Negative emotions are physical pains In this activity, students are guided to search for the different senses of the same word forms, to link one domain to another, and eventually to find the potential conceptual metaphors linking these two topic domains In this way, students can easily memorize the meanings of a word

In short, in order to extend learners’ account of vocabulary, teachers should use metaphor in vocabulary teaching as much as possible

2.6.2 Conceptualizing abstract vocabulary categories

Metaphor is not just a figure of speech, but a way we perceive the world

“Language is essentially metaphoric”, because metaphor is widely used in our daily life, lives in our language, is in our thought and behavior As John and Lakoff (1980) note that the conceptual system that our thought and behavior rely

on is metaphoric in nature In the same sense, metaphor is an important way of

language change and development We can feel metaphor everywhere, at any time, since it is a way of thinking So it will be a good try to teach English vocabulary

by making use of metaphors They are powerful cognitive tools for our conceptualization of abstract vocabulary categories The most important feature of metaphor is its relatedness between things and categories For example, the word

“leg” can be used to refer to legs of human beings, legs of a chair, a bed, a table, and so on, which basically means “the support of things” (Yanqing Chen 2009 P

99)

In belief, in vocabulary teaching and learning, we should try every possible means to develop metaphorical awareness, make full use of the cognitive function

of metaphor and reveal the metaphorical relationship between word meanings

2.6.4 Forming words

In the study of Zou Jiahui (2008 P265), in the first data collection, he

randomly chose 328 new words from the dictionary They are 231 nouns and 61 adjectives, 34 verbs and 2 adverbs which are open-class words With the emergence of new ideas, inventions, ect., new expressions are continually and constantly being added to the lexicon They are in infinite or unlimited (Hu, 2001:81) Most of the meanings of new words are formed metaphorically It is no doubt that people usually understand the new things with metaphorical cognition mapping from the odd and familiar domain to the new and unfamiliar domain by which the meanings of the new words are formed, which is the main way of forming new words The number of words is limited, but the human cognition is unlimited So man can use the limited words to express the endless world by metaphorical cognition That is the main source of the new words

In belief, I see that using metaphor in vocabulary learning and teaching is also one of the ways to expand account of vocabulary, so it is essential for both teachers and learners to apply it to their teaching and learning