隐喻和大学英语词汇教学

　　摘要：隐喻不仅是自然语言中普遍存在的一种现象，而且影响我们的思维方式。隐喻作为认知和语言的纽带，在词汇学习中扮演着不可或缺的角色。从隐喻入手学习词汇符合认知规律，可有效的突破传统词汇学习的瓶颈，从而帮助学生达到真正意义上的概念流利。

　　关键词：认知隐喻；概念隐喻；英语教学

　　Abstract: Metaphor is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the natural language and actually influences our way of thinking. Word learning from metaphor conforms to the law of cognitive science. With the help of metaphor， students can effectively extricate from difficulty in word learning， and achieve a genuine conceptual fluency.

　　Key words: cognitive semantics; conceptual metaphor; teaching in English
　　
　　 I.Preface
　　From the beginning of last century to now，scholars have done much research on metaphor from different angles such as philosophy， logics， linguistics and so on. They find thatmetaphor exists everywhere in people’s daily life， and so does in almost all human language. In 1980， Lakoff&Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By was published， from which we know more about the importance and relationship between metaphor and language-studying. In college English vocabulary teaching， teachers will frequently contact with metaphor phenomenon in word learning， grammar and chapters. English vocabulary is abundant， both simple and complicated， many of which are somewhat romantic and mysterious. If a person wants to use a new language well to express himself and communicate with others， he should acquire plenty of vocabulary. So in this paper， I will probe into the significance of metaphor on the vocabulary teaching in college English.
　　 II．The definition of metaphor and some related research
　　The word metaphor originated from the word metapherein of Greek， in which meta means over and pherein means to carry， and the whole meaning is to carry over. Early more than two thousand years ago， in ancient Greek， Aristotle defined in his book Poetics that metaphor is to use the name of another matter as that of this one. In later 1980s， American scholar Albert indicated that metaphor is a kind of valuable structure of language.
　　 Lakoff&Johnson use the mapping between source domain and target domain and image schemas to reveal the metaphor phenomenon. Theypointed that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical， and our ordinary conceptual system， in terms of which we both think and act， is fundamentally metaphorical in nature （Lakoff&Johnson， 1980:3）.
　　 One of the commonest of all types of semantic change is metaphor: applying a word to something it does not literally denote in order to draw attention to a resemblance. According to the development of metaphor theory， Metaphor includes simile， metonymy， synecdoche， irony， allusion and etc. Metaphor is a kind of art of language that describe some association in the process of cognition， also a psychological phenomenon and a thinking course. On the psychological basis of association， metaphor covers three necessary essences: the tenor， the vehicle and the ground. Simultaneously， metaphor contains three main features: First， it comprises the concept which may be totally different with its literal meaning; second， metaphor can endow the abstract notion or implication with concrete image; third， metaphor can make lifeless objects vivid， so as to form certain imagination or express one’s feeling.
　　III．Metaphor and the Vocabulary Teaching in college English
　　
　　 While entering 21st century， one of the focuses on English-teaching is how to increase the students’ ability of using vocabulary. English teachers are facing the problem of how to help students in-put and out-put word information， how to promote their ability of word cognition. Through the research on a lot of language material， scholars propose that in the expression of words， over 70% comes from conceptual metaphor. Metaphor maps one conceptual structure or image to another conceptual structure or image. There are countless examples in English， e.g: Love is a journey. In fact， people use the source domain Journey to conceptualize the target domain Love.
　　 There are three parts where we can use metaphor for vocabulary teaching of college English:
　　 i．Teaching vocabulary by the metaphorical contrast of English and Chinese
　　 From my own English teaching experience， I find that students often ask me how to grasp the deep meaning of words. Sometimes when they come across a sentence or an article， even there is no so called new words， they still feel difficult in understanding them. We had better use the way of metaphor to teach students vocabulary. If the teacher really wants his students to master a foreign language quite well， first， he canteach English vocabulary by the metaphorical contrast of English and Chinese， or we can say， he should teach vocabulary with the metaphorical way. For instance，the sentence Economy is machinery is a conceptual metaphor， which use our familiar concept machinery to construct the strange and abstract knowledge of economy. By the medium of conceptual metaphor， it won’t be difficult for us to understand such metaphorical expression: to tighten the screws on the economy， the economy is overheating. 　 ii．Teaching new vocabulary from the angle of metaphor
　　 Second， besides the above， teachers can teach new words from the angle of metaphor. For example， there come many new words with the development of computer science and the internet. Then another example， the word mouse， can be translated as“老鼠”，“鼠标”. The metaphorical implication of these two explanations is that they have similar size， same colour and so on. There are some words like this such as modem（猫）， cyber nut（网虫）， surf the web（冲浪）. Teachers can divide them into different groups: Group one: combined words， such as software， chat -room， scrollbar， online， backspace. While teaching these words， the teacher can connect them with the vocabulary which students have learned before， so that students could quickly grasp them and keep them.