认知隐喻与词汇教学.doc

Conceptual Metaphor and English Vocabulary Teaching Abstract：Conceptual metaphors are seen in language in our everyday lives. Metaphor plays an indispensable role in vocabulary teaching．The feasibility of the application of this theory to vocabulary teaching is discussed，which is based on the analysis of the theoretical foundation and the metaphorical property of vocabulary．Then some suggestions are supplied to help teachers improve vocabulary teaching strategies． Key words：metaphor；conceptual metaphor；vocabulary teaching In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. prices are rising). A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience. The regularity with which different languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains corresponds to neural mappings in the brain. Conceptual metaphors are seen in language in our everyday lives. Conceptual metaphors shape not just our communication, but also shape the way we think and act. In George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, Metaphors We Live By (1980), we see how everyday language is filled with metaphors we may not always notice. An example of one of the commonly used conceptual metaphors is argument is war. This metaphor shapes our language in the way we view argument as war or as a battle to be won. It is not uncommon to hear someone say He won that argument or I attacked every weak point in his argument. The very way argument is thought of is shaped by this metaphor of arguments being war and battles that must be won. Argument can be seen in many other ways other than a battle, but we use this concept to shape the way we think of argument and the way we go about arguing. Conceptual metaphors are used very often to understan