Conceptual Metaphor and Language Learning
There is some evidence that an understanding of underlying conceptual metaphors can aid the retention of vocabulary for people learning a foreign language. To improve learners' awareness of conceptual metaphor, one monolingual learner's dictionary, the Macmillan English Dictionary has introduced 50 or so 'metaphor boxes' covering the most salient Lakoffian metaphors in English. For example, the dictionary entry for conversation includes a box with the heading: 'A conversation is like a journey, with the speakers going from one place to another', followed by vocabulary items (words and phrases) which embody this metaphorical schema Language teaching experts are beginning to explore the relevance of conceptual metaphor to how learners learn and what teachers do in the classroom.
Read more about this topic: Conceptual Metaphor
Famous quotes containing the words conceptual, metaphor, language and/or learning:
“The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)