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西安外国语大学 英文学院 710128
Abstract: This paper mainly talks about the metaphoric features of English words. And the inspiration from these features for English vocabulary learning will be discussed. Finally, some tentative suggestions will be given to words learning.
Key words: metaphoric features; English vocabulary; Vocabulary learning; inspiration.
1.Introduction
In the process of learning a language, the learning of word is of vital importance as well as of great difficulties. There is no exception in the process of English Learning, word plays a crucial role. The word to English is what the root to the tree. However, it’s the metaphoric and idiomatic features of vocabulary make learning English more laborious. Therefore, we should pay great attention to vocabulary learning. In this paper, we will discuss the semantic features of metaphors; then we will talk something about the learning process of words; finally, according to the semantic features of metaphor, we will give some tentative suggestions to words learning. In the end, there will be a brief conclusion of this paper.
2. Literature Review
From Lakoff’s Cognitive point of view, metaphor establishes correspondences between the source and target domain. For example, “Time is money”, in this metaphor, we the target domain “time” is mapped on the source domain of “money” which is a concrete concept that we are familiar with. Collocation and context provides the condition for lexical metaphor which is a main way of the change of lexical meaning. It is metaphor which makes the language fresh, creative and active, which makes the language develop constantly. The development of the Cognitive Linguistics makes us clearly realize the importance of the metaphorical thoughts related to physical experience.
Shu Dingfang (2000) makes some comments on this topic. He says that, metaphors are the major ways to generate new lexical meaning in language. From the nature of language, lexical metaphor always follows the principle of economy. In the representation of a concept, if every concept needs a word to correspond to it in every language, we will need to extend infinitely the number of the words, which will badly conflict with the economical principle and increase the burden of our memory. To avoid all of these, we introduce the lexical metaphor and use the contextually sensitive lexical system to express the extraordinarily complicated human experience.
3. The Semantic Features of Metaphors
The semantic contradiction of metaphors refers to the meaning of the sentence contradicts with the context it is in. The semantic systematicness of metaphors refers that the metaphor contains the relationship transference of the entire domains involved. For example, “Argument is war”, in such a metaphor sentence we can know several related words to describe metaphor, such as, attack a position, strategy, win, gain ground and so on. The temporality of metaphor means that the meaning of a metaphor is changing from time to time. The semantic degree of metaphor means that different metaphors have different degrees of metaphoricality. There are two kinds of metaphors: dead metaphors and active metaphors. But there is no absolute boundary between the dead and the active metaphor, it is a matter of degree. Generally, the relation is the higher conventionality of metaphor the lower the degree of metaphor.
4. Inspiration for Vocabulary Learning
From what have been mentioned above, some suggestions will be given here. We can make use of the interrelationship between words and classify the words into different classes, which will improve the efficiency of memorizing new words. Also, we’d better recite the dead metaphor more mechanically while pay more attention to understand the words of high and novel metahporicality. By doing this we can release the burden of our memory and then improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning. We also need to have a changeable view towards metaphor.
5.Conclusion
Metaphor is a very important way of words’ development, and the semantic features of metaphors provide a novel way to observe human’s thought patterns. Thus, we can make use of the ways that the words are generated to grasp the nature of words and then combine it with the students’ thought patterns to make the study of new words much easier. We should bear in mind that the semantic features of metaphors is of vital importance in the study of English words. By doing this we can improve the efficiency of learning new English words.
References
Goatly, A. (1997). The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.
Lakoff, G. Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
束定芳（2000）。《隐喻学研究》。上海：上海外语教育出版社。
作者简介：许苗，1991年3月16日出生，女，汉族，商洛市商州区人，现就读于西安外国语大学英文学院2015级外国语言学及应用语言学专业，主要研究方向：理论语言学。
论文作者:许苗
论文发表刊物:《语言文字学》2017年4月
论文发表时间:2017/7/27
标签：语言学论文; 商洛市论文; 英文论文; 西安论文; 上海论文; 汉族论文; 外国语大学论文; 《语言文字学》2017年4月论文;