83 / 2018-07-18 10:19:05

Conceptual Metaphors in ESP Vocabulary Teaching

Keywords: conceptual metaphor, ESP, vocabulary

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Conceptual Metaphors in ESP Vocabulary Teaching
JIA Linghua
Abstract: Metaphor is a figure of speech, which is now considered as a matter of thought by cognitive linguists. In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one thing in terms of another. The cognitive function of metaphor is to understand a difficult or abstract concept (target domain) in terms of another less complicated and more concrete concept (source domain). Economic discourses are very abundant in conceptual metaphors. Given the abundance of metaphors, this paper attempts to include metaphoric expressions in ESP syllabus as an integral part of the vocabulary Economics students should learn. Firstly, students’ metaphoric awareness will be activated through a series of questions. Secondly, students will be introduced to the topic of cognitive metaphor by giving Lakoff’s definition of metaphor and its characteristics. Thirdly, activirties are designed to teach typical business metaphors, like ECONOMY IS PATIENT, ECONOMY IS WAR etc. to enhance students’ understanding of content specific business lexis. It is hoped that students can transfer the language knowledge they have already acquired to make abstract business discourses become concrete. Thus students will make business communications more smoothly and more proficiently.
Keywords: conceptual metaphor, ESP, vocabulary