隐喻在文章语境中的理解——概念隐喻理论探讨

The Comprehension of Metaphors in Context:A Discussion on the Theory of Conceptual Mapping

概念隐喻理论认为,语言系统中存在着广泛的隐喻一致性,人们对于隐喻的理解是通过将其匹配到基本的概念隐喻来进行的。但有研究者指出,除了一些新颖的隐喻,惯用隐喻的理解并不需要概念匹配。本研究认为,概念隐喻已经储存在长时记忆中,在文章语境中,无论惯用隐喻还是新颖隐喻的理解都可能产生概念匹配。三个实验支持了这一假设。实验一通过目标句的阅读反应时探讨不同文章版本下目标句的理解情况;实验二和实验三从事后与即时两方面对各种文章版本下的概念匹配情况进行比较。研究结果支持了概念隐喻理论。

The conceptual metaphor view holds that any language system consists of a large number of metaphorical expressions, and people routinely use conceptual mappings such as ＂Time is money＂and ＂Argument is war.＂ in understanding conventional expressions. But some researchers maintain that conceptual mapping is not necessary during understanding conventional metaphors, except those non-conventional ones. Our main hypothesis is that if the conceptual metaphor view is right, even in absence of any obvious metaphor expressions, the reader can also acquire conceptual mapping from the long-term memory system. So the existence of metaphorical expressions can＇t be the measurement of conceptual-mapping. Three experiments supported this claim and provided evidence for the conceptual metaphor view.