Conceptual metaphor and corpus linguistics

Abstract

The present study deals with the understanding of metaphors by foreign language learners. Ten linguistic metaphors were selected from English and American newspapers. After that, we identified the underlying conceptual metaphor based on the conceptual metaphor inventory presented by Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999) and the primary metaphor inventory proposed by Grady (1997). Considering the difficulties linguistic metaphors represent for text comprehension by non-native speakers, we seek to investigate what sort of knowledge foreign language learners use when trying to understand a linguistic metaphor. In this respect, we looked into the way foreign language readers comprehend linguistic metaphors, firstly without using the context and then using the context. We present experimental data to support the hypothesis that foreign language readers access conceptual knowledge when processing a linguistic metaphor in a foreign language. The sample comprised 221 Brazilian undergraduate students. The results of the study carried out with Brazilian foreign language learners corroborate our hypothesis that there is a universal pattern in the structuring of abstract concepts which enhances the comprehension of metaphor in a foreign language. We have also compared those data to the results of a study which examined the same metaphors using corpus linguistics methodology. In a nutshell, the results reveal that the comprehension process in the foreign language is strongly influenced by embodied cognition (Gibbs Jr., 2006).

Key words: cognitive linguistics, foreign language acquisition, corpus linguistics.