儿童类比思维语义知识对于隐喻理解的影响

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The Effects of Analogical Thinking and Semantic Knowledge on Metaphor Comprehension Among 12-14-year-old Children

Abstract

Previous studies have shown semantic knowledge plays a more important role in understanding conventional metaphors than novel metaphors; analogical thinking plays a more important role in understanding visual metaphors than verbal metaphors. However, they only have studied the effects of analogical thinking and semantic knowledge on the comprehension of the one-single-side metaphors, not mixed ones, including the visual conventional metaphor vs. the visual novel metaphor, the conventional visual metaphor vs. the conventional verbal metaphor and etc. In the current study we assessed the effects of analogical thinking and semantic knowledge on the comprehension of different mixed metaphors by four comparative experiments. 40 children aged from 12 to 14 were separated into two groups and they did the comparative experiments in two separate rooms. The two main methods are the visual metaphor test – MTT and the metaphoric questionnaire. Our results showed that analogical thinking and semantic knowledge play different roles to some extent in the comprehension of different mixed metaphors. 46702

Keywords: analogical thinking; semantic knowledge; visual metaphor; verbal metaphor; conventional metaphor; novel metaphor

12岁-14岁儿童类比思维、语义知识对于隐喻理解的影响

摘要以往的研究表明语义知识在理解传统隐喻上比理解新奇隐喻发挥着更重要的作用;类比思维在理解视觉隐喻上比理解口头隐喻发挥着更重要的作用。然而，过去的研究只研究了类比思维和语义知识对理解单方面隐喻的影响，而不是那些混合的隐喻搭配，包括视觉传统隐喻与视觉新奇隐喻，传统视觉隐喻与传统口头隐喻等。在此研究中，我们通过4组对照实验评估了类比思维和语义知识对不同的混合隐喻的理解的影响。40名年龄在12至14岁的儿童被分为两组，他们在两个单独的房间做了对比实验。实验中采取的两种主要的方法是视觉隐喻测试 - MTT法和隐喻问卷调查。我们的研究结果表明，类比思维和语义知识在理解不同的混合隐喻上扮演着不同程度的角色。

毕业论文关键词：类比思维；语义知识；视觉隐喻；口头隐喻；传统隐喻；新奇隐喻

Contents

1. Introduction １

2. Methods ４

2.1 Participants ４

2.2 Material…… ４

2.2.1 The visual metaphor test – MTT４

2.3. Procedure.５

2.3.1 Experiment 1 the conventional visual metaphor vs. the conventional verbal metaphor５

2.3.2 Experiment 2 the novel visual metaphor vs. the novel verbal metaphor...６

2.3.3 Experiment 3 the verbal conventional metaphor vs. the verbal novel metaphor...６

2.3.4 Experiment 4 the visual conventional metaphor vs. the visual novel metaphor ..７

3. Results ８

3.1. Results of Experiment 1 the conventional visual metaphor vs. the conventional verbal metaphor.８

3.2. Results of Experiment 2 the novel visual metaphor vs. the novel verbal metaphor.９

3.3. Results of Experiment 3 the verbal conventional metaphor vs. the verbal novel metaphor..９

3.4. Results of Experiment 4 the visual conventional metaphor vs. the visual novel metaphor..１０

4. Discussion..１１.

References..１２

1. Introduction

Metaphor is traditionally defined as a literary or rhetorical device whereby a speaker refers to one domain of knowledge (the target) in terms of a different domain (the source), as in “My love is a red, red rose.” The Structure Mapping model (Gentner and Wolff, 1997) proposes that metaphors act to set up correspondences between conceptual structures of the target and base concepts. Metaphors play a natural and often a necessary role in the mundane language of everyday interaction. Developing metaphor competence enables children to use metaphor for reaching shared understandings and for learning. A metaphor is a prototypical form of non-literal language that forms linkages between two seemingly unrelated domains of knowledge. In a metaphor, properties of the vehicle term are attributed to the target term on the basis of some similarities. Keil (1986) argued that to understand metaphors one must have enough knowledge to discover a similarity between the two concepts involved (the topic and the base term of the metaphoric expression). In other words, metaphor understanding requires some necessary knowledge about the vehicle term and in addition, the construction of similarity between the vehicle and the target term (Ortony, 1979). What’s more, Metaphor comprehension gradually develops throughout childhood into adulthood simultaneously with other cognitive capacities as well with the development of world knowledge. (Vosniadou & Ortony, 1983). And at different age, children have different level of metaphor comprehension. Gentner (1988) proposed that children aged around 6 or 7 years interpret metaphorical comparisons first in terms of perceptual similarity and then in other types of similarity. But by the age of 11–12, children can interpret most types of metaphors, including those that require fairly precise conceptualization (Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976). Thus in the current study, 12-14-year-old children they already have a mature development of cognitive capacities and they can interpret most types of metaphors, such as conventional & novel metaphors, visual & verbal metaphors.