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Metaphorical Systems and their Implications to Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Abstract
This paper is about an investigation into metaphorical systems as an approach to teach polysemous words to foreign language learners. Metaphorical usage is prevalent in authentic texts and the foreign language learner when dealing with them is faced with words that carry several meanings. In order to see the prevalence as such and also to see the nature of polysemy in comparison with the first language, two newspaper articles at random were chosen. The articles are both on the same topic, elections, and one is in English and the other in Japanese. The metaphorical systems found in the articles were found to be prevalent in both languages except for a few marked ones. However, the extent of polysemy seemed to differ. The method of translating each article into the other language made comparison of the usage of the polysemous words useful. It is argued that such an effective way of discovering polysemy may facilitate vocabulary learning. In conclusion, this study favors the introduction of an approach that uses metaphorical systems to develop the foreign language learner’s English vocabulary.
Introduction
In their joint commitment to finding out ‘how people understand their language and their experience’, (1980) studied the patterns of metaphors that occurred in everyday English. They found a systematicity in the usage of conventional expressions and novel language constructions as well as a systematicity in the reasoning of abstract concepts. Their findings led them to the generalization that ‘our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature’ (1980) and that it is in constant use just like the ‘system of grammatical and phonological rules’ that operate unconsciously and automatically (1993), and thus challenging the traditional view that figurative language is ‘unimportant, deviant, and parasitic on “normal usage” ’ (1993:).
For the English teacher, such as myself, this has some important implications. I have often wondered of ways to promote the understanding of metaphorical concepts ‘in the way that the target language community does’ (1998). In the ‘authentic material’ I use, such as humorous language, song lyrics, movie scripts, newspaper and magazine articles, myths, tales and fables, the students have to deal with numerous metaphorical concepts which are sometimes quite different from their own Japanese ones. Usually, I would resort to paraphrasing, translations and dictionary definitions. But now with mounting evidence and empirical findings (1987; 1986; 1990) related to the systematicity and pervasiveness of conventional metaphors, I am motivated to think of a more macroscopic way of dealing with the problem.
In this paper, I will attempt at identifying and comparing the ‘metaphorical systems’ (i.e.: the systematicity of metaphors) used in two newspaper articles, one in English and the other in Japanese. This is relevant to my teaching situation at Kyoto Municipal Saikyo Senior High School in Japan where I am preparing my students to read and comprehend university entrance examination reading texts which are usually‘adult level, well-written, grammatically and stylistically correct’ (1995).
After an analysis of the metaphorical systems, it will be argued that the systematic nature of metaphorical systems can be of use to the foreign language learner. But, first I will clarify my understanding of the term metaphorical systems, and attempt at showing how pervasive they are supposed to be in everyday language. It is argued that by showing the pervasiveness of metaphors and their systems, the necessity of bringing them to the attention of learners becomes clearer.
1. Metaphorical Systems
Metaphors
In their study of metaphors, (1980) have found that far from being poetic and figures of speech, they were pervasive in conventional language and thought. Expressions like, Your claims are indefensible; He attacked every weak point in my argument; His criticisms were right on target; revealed the underlying metaphorical concept of: ‘Argument is War’. In this way, they were able to identify many metaphorical concepts underlying our language about time, events, motion, spaces and emotions, to name a few.
One salient feature of these concepts is the systematic way the words from the source domain (war) are used in everyday language to describe the abstract war-like aspects in the target domain (argument). Another, is that when using the Argument is War system, other aspects of the target domain (e.g., cooperative aspects) become ‘hidden’ ().
Metaphorical language allows us to express our abstract and difficult concepts in concrete terms. Therefore, I can talk about love in terms of falling in some bounded region; and not just be content with the literal meaning of love to convey that extraordinary feeling. These are some of the features that make up the essential nature of a metaphorical utterance.
For the native speaker who is unaware of the metaphorical systems operating in the mind readily understands and uses expressions such as: ‘Look how far we have come’, ‘It’s been a long, bumpy road’, ‘We can’t turn back now’ and ‘We’re at a crossroads’ (1993). Lakoff and Johnson say that this is possible due to the ‘generalizations governing polysemy’ and ‘generalizations governing inference patterns’ found in language.
This brings up the question, How can the foreign language learner acquire such unconscious behaviour?
Hypothetically speaking, the acquisition process may be facilitated when the metaphorical systems are used to bring to the attention of the learner the ‘generalizations governing polysemy’ that are described ‘in terms of conceptual organization’ (1987) or for practical purposes exposure to the conventional usage of metaphorical expressions.
As far back as 1973, hypothesized that many of our everyday metaphors relate to human perceptual systems and experiences with the real world and thus would occur across languages (1995). However, (1980) have shown that everyday metaphors in a language are culturally as well as perceptually based.
Primary Metaphors
Just by functioning normally in the world, we automatically and unconsciously acquire and use a vast number of such metaphors. Those metaphors are realized in our brains physically and are mostly beyond our control. They are a consequence of the nature of our brains, our bodies, and the world we inhabit. (1999)
() point out that the reason we conceptualize for example: understanding an idea as grasping an object, lies in the primary metaphors we have built up since early childhood (). These metaphors are said to have developed after a period of conflation of our subjective and sensorimotor experiences. These experiences gradually give way to ‘a period of differentiation’ creating separate domains, while the cross-domain associations continue to persist (). This cognitive mechanism of cross-domain associations is what allows us to view a subjective experience of understanding an idea in terms of the sensorimotor experience of grasping. Similarly, there are supposed to be several hundred of such primary metaphors () prevalent in a culture. Some of them possibly exist, it is predicted, universal across cultures.
Basic Event-Structure Metaphor
The basic event-structure metaphor reveals ‘our most fundamental understanding of what events and causes are’ (1999). In addition, (1993) had previously emphasized that ‘various aspects of event structure, including notions like states, changes, processes, actions, causes, purposes, and means, are characterized cognitively via metaphors in terms of space, motion, and force’.
The basic event-structure metaphors are fundamental categories through which we comprehend the world and such basic event-structure metaphors ‘are fundamental not only to our literal conceptualization of the world but to our metaphorical conceptualization as well’ (1999). Support for this comes from the studies of (1974), (1977), (1981) and (1984) who have shown that ‘our earliest and most natural form of categorization’ (1987) are the basic-level categories.
Of the many salient features of the basic event-structure metaphor (1999), the hierarchical nature found in the interaction between metaphorical systems seems to stand out as being relevant to the foreign language learner. For example, the Life is a Journey metaphor entails the interaction of other events in life such as, love, career and so on. In other words, The Love is a Journey and Career is a Journey metaphors inherit the structure of Life is a Journey metaphor ( 1993: ). This inheritance factor allows for expressing love and career domains in terms of the journey domain. This expression of metaphors in general categories is what connects them or in Lakoff and Johnson’s words gives them ‘coherence’ (19805).
2.4 Shortcomings
Though (1980; 1999) and (1994) have emphasized that metaphorical systems motivate large areas of our language use, (1998) cites two crucial problems. One, that the perceptual experience ends up being, once again, “disembodied”,’ in their ‘well-structured and predictable mappings’ bearing similarities to the ‘abstract-based format of traditional semantic accounts’. Two, that findings in the field of meaning representation studies( 1997; 1997) show the inadequacy of the ‘inferential-literal’ language in describing many visual, haptic, kinesthetic and other perceptions (). In addition, (1999), finds the present theory of metaphorical systems to be inadequate in explaining the partial and overlapping aspects of metaphor.
Furthermore, (1991) points out, that we need more justification before we rush to generalize for example, She lost me then as evidence that she is behaving according to the underlying metaphorical concept of Learning is a Journey. (1999) agrees and () suggests the need for more ethnographic evidence.
2. Metaphorical Systems in the Newspaper Articles
In the next part of this paper, an attempt will be made at identifying the metaphorical systems found in similar newspaper articles of an English newspaper and a Japanese one. The systems will be compared and their similarities and differences will be highlighted. Finally, in this way, some important implications for the foreign language learner will be formulated.
Materials and Method
For this study, an article about the elections in Iran from the February 21, 2000 issue of the Herald Tribune (see Appendix A) and a similar article on the same date from the issue of the Asahi Shimbun (see Appendix B), randomly selected, will be the subject of this investigation.
First, the metaphorical systems in the English newspaper article have been listed by categorizing the conventional metaphors (Table 1, Appendix C). Next, the same can be seen for the Japanese newspaper article in Table 2, Appendix D. Later, for the purpose of locating the similarities and differences in the metaphorical systems of the respective articles, the conventional metaphors were translated into the language of comparison (Table 1, and Table 2). However, only those metaphorical systems occurring more than once in the articles have been considered as the main metaphorical systems. The other metaphorical systems in the articles that were determined from single occurrences of conventional metaphors are not dealt with in this paper, but only those found to be different or marked when translated are cited and dealt with in section 3.6 of this paper (also Table 3, Appendix E).
For this study, ‘The New Japanese-English Dictionary’ ( 1974) was the basis for all the Japanese to English translations, and (Japanese English teacher at Rakusei Junior and Senior High Schools) expertise for the Japanese translations.
Limitations
The method of identifying the metaphorical systems is limited by the ability to recognize the source and target domains. There is going to be a ‘measure of subjectivity’ and ‘randomness’ in such a ‘unilateral approach’ (1999). In addition, ‘peripherally relatable’ () cases of metaphors might be emphasized due to reading the articles many times over. Finally, with an approach that is dependent on translation for seeking out the differences and similarities there is the danger of being satisfied when the ‘truth conditions’ (1987) have been fulfilled, thereby missing ‘how concepts are organized’.
The Main English Metaphorical Systems in the English Newspaper Article and their prevalence in Japanese
The following metaphorical systems were found to operate in more than one instance of conventional metaphorical expressions in the English newspaper article:
l Election is a Race
l Election is War
l Elections are Locations
l Election is a Movement of an Object
(refer to Table 1, Appendix C for details)
The four metaphorical systems underlying the English newspaper article is dispersed in the following way:
l Election is a Race has thirteen sentences.
l Election is War has nine sentences of which seven overlap with the Election is a Race system.
l Elections are Locations has four sentences.
l Elections is a Movement of an Object has five sentences.
Now, in order to see the prevalence of the conventional metaphors found in the English newspaper article in Japanese, the expressions were translated. Conventional metaphors in Japanese were found prevalent for a majority of the cases. The exceptions were found for one sentence in the Election is a Race system, and all the five sentences in the Election is a Movement of an Object system.
The sentence, ‘Preliminary results showed Mr. Rafsanjani coming in as far down the list as twenty-fifth’ uses the words coming in metaphorically. This when translated to Japanese is nonsensical as the ni kiteiru the Japanese translation for coming in cannot be used to describe the meaning of the English sentence. Instead, the sentence would have to be translated using the Japanese words ni ranku sareta to literally mean, was ranked so as to describe the result of the candidate.
As for Election is a Movement of an Object, all the five sentences do not have translations using the same English equivalents for went to, put in, give, handed and moving (refer to Table 1, Appendix C) which in Japanese are ni itta, ni oku, ataeru, tewatasu and ugokasu, respectively. Instead, tori meaning has taken; nari meaning became; ni yori meaning through, ijoushita meaning transfer, and ni meaning towards, are the translations for the English words cited above. Nevertheless, these are words describing movement of an object. This indicates the similarity of the system but differences in describing the concepts. Moreover, as the words are all from the same source domain of movement of an object, it is likely that this is a case of ‘coherence’ showing the connections between the metaphors in both languages.
The Main Japanese Metaphorical Systems in the Japanese Newspaper Article and their prevalence in English
The following metaphorical systems were found to operate in more than one instance of conventional metaphorical expressions in the Japanese newspaper article:
l Election is War
l Election is a Race
l Positions are Body Parts
(refer to Table 2, Appendix D for details)
The Japanese newspaper article is mainly based on two metaphorical systems and one other metaphorical system in a minor way. The occurrence of the metaphors are as follows:
l Election is War has twenty-one sentences.
l Election is a Race has seven sentences of which three sentences overlap with the Election is War system.
l Positions are Body Parts has two sentences.
Interestingly, all the Japanese conventional metaphors in the newspaper article could be translated into English without any sense of loss of the concepts that are expressed (refer to Table 2, Appendix D).
A Closer Look at Both the Systems
The two articles seem to highlight similar concepts about the elections in Iran. They highlighted the war and race aspects of the elections. However, the Japanese newspaper article stressed the war aspects more while the English newspaper article stressed the race aspect a little more than the war aspect. There were quite a few sentences indicating the location and movement of an object aspects, as well.
As a result, the cooperative and journey aspects that elections carry were hidden in both articles. For example, the elections might have been held in a very orderly and under civil circumstances (in some areas) showing cooperation among the voters, election officials and candidates. Besides, the long-term effects elections have on a country and the direction they take the country in have been hidden or downplayed.
Other similarities can be seen in the use of the expression landslide victory in both newspaper articles, and many instances of the use of the same polysemous words in the war and race domains. Similarities in most of the concepts can be seen in translations, where most of the metaphorical expressions were found to exist in both languages.
However, the use of the exact same words differed in certain places. For example, the word run used to express running for elections had a corresponding word in Japanese called shutsuba (literally meaning running away or run for). On further analysis this word revealed that it is used only to describe the act of standing for election or running for election. Though the Chinese characters of 出 (shutsu, meaning emerge or put out), and 馬 (ba meaning horse) have metaphorical connotations, Lakoff and Johnson would call such usage as a ‘dead metaphor’ (1999).
Moreover the Japanese word for run is hashiru which is not used to express the act of running in an election. In other words, the polysemous meanings of the English word run are not the same for the ones found for hashiru. One clear example can be seen in the following sentence where hashiru is not used for the translation: His arguments run counter to what we have proposed. The converse is also true. The Japanese language uses the word hashiru (run) to describe a moving car such as in the following: hashitteiru kuruma kara tobi oriru (Jump off a moving car). In the English language it would sound nonsensical to say, Jump off a running car.
There were many such words where the extent of polysemy varied. The Japanese particles ‘ni’ and ‘o’ are polysemous, too. ‘ni’ can mean in, at, on and into. While ‘o’ can mean at, of, on, in and with. This could be a very troublesome area to learn for a foreign language speaker, and in addition this seems to cause a lot of confusion to my students when dealing with English prepositions.
In the Japanese expressions under Positions are Body Parts, English equivalents were available, but on closer examination, there is a small difference in the Chinese character for head used to describe a leader or a head of an organization. The character used is 首 (neck) and not 頭 (head).
There were also two Japanese sentences with words that would sound odd when translated into English. The metaphorical systems followed were, Blood Relations are Real and Omission is a Leakage which are quite marked for the English language (refer to Table 3, Appendix E). The word jittei (real younger brother) is used to distinguish blood relations from other relations. It is common in the Japanese language to combine the Chinese character for real (実) with family relations such as, real-father (実父), real-mother (実母), and real-older-brother (実兄).
In the case of the metaphorical system Omission is a Leakage, a single occurrence of a Japanese sentence that describes a person being omitted from the list as a leakage (moreta), quite awkward in English. However, this word moreta (past tense of moreru) is also used for describing a leaked secret, very similar to the English usage in this sense.
Finally, phrases such as social labels, labeled as an American and labeled as a slang in my dictionary are marked expressions in Japanese. The conventional usage of the word for label (retteru) is different in Japanese, though it is used to translate the just mentioned phrases. The English metaphorical system of Categories are Labels seems to sound odd in the Japanese language.
All in all, most of the metaphorical systems found in both the newspaper articles could be translated back and forth into the two languages with little loss of the meaning they carry. It may be safe to say that the metaphorical systems used for describing elections are very similar in the two languages. This could be due to the universality of the concepts governing elections across many languages. However, the extent of the polysemous usage of the words appearing in the metaphors seems to vary.
3. Implications for Foreign Language Learners
It is believed that as foreign language learners already possess ‘ world knowledge’ and ‘discourse knowledge’ which can be used to help where there is a lack of ‘linguistic knowledge’ (1991), an awareness of universal and differing metaphorical concepts may also be helpful.
Translating tasks are very common in Japanese English classrooms and this practice is highly favoured by most of the Japanese secondary school English teachers (1988;1999). However, using this task for ‘hypothesis testing’ (1987) is rare as mostly the practice is to do with building vocabulary and grammar knowledge (ibid). It is possible that by using translation as a tool to seek the metaphorical systems that underlie the target text the Japanese English teachers may find a way of providing for a more stimulating discussion of the phrases and words being used.
By contrasting and comparing the metaphorical systems used in authentic texts by first setting up a task of translation may offer the foreign language learner the opportunity to obtain ‘data crucial for the testing of hypothesis’ (1987). The data will speak of the similarities and differences in the metaphorical expressions and polysemous usage of words. For example, the information gleaned from the comparisons made between the English and Japanese newspaper articles on the elections in Iran could be extended to a writing exercise to describe elections in Japan. Furthermore, such topics as politics or debating could be described using the same source domain of War (same as for elections). In this way, the foreign language learner could form generalizations and strategies through trial and error for expressing abstract concepts, and in addition develop a strong familiarity with the polysemous meanings of the words.
However, the introduction of metaphorical systems as an approach for understanding the target language may first require some understanding of the ‘approach’ itself. Metaphorical idioms may be a good source. One book, The Big Picture (1999) in particular stands out for listing such idioms under metaphorical systems. () suggests that it becomes easier to remember such idioms when the meanings they entail are understood. Interestingly, the many metaphorical idioms are described in pictures, too. Again, a compare and contrast task by translation of the metaphorical idioms could be one way to introduce the ‘approach’.
Familiarity to the foreign language may be facilitated, if not accelerated, by developing a familiarity to the metaphorical concepts that underlie the target language. Teachers of English as a foreign language need to provide tools and strategies to their learners to help them effectively build semantic memories of the words and phrases in the target language. The effectiveness can only be judged to the extent such knowledge of words and phrases are retained in long-term memory. The argument here is that metaphorical systems provide patterns in the linguistic data which may help build solid semantic mappings of words and phrases in the learner’s brain as opposed to rote learning and learning from lists.
However, it is acknowledged that for a pattern to be discerned the brain requires quantum amounts of experience (2002), which again are necessary for applying the pattern (ibid). In learning a foreign language as opposed to a second language, exposure is mainly limited to the classroom thereby making ‘quantum amounts of experience’ a far cry. Then what should be given priority is to provide efficient modes of exposure to the foreign language learner.
It may be interesting to note, that for example, a study in 1987 concluded that students (not foreign language students, however) were generally retaining, 10% of what they had read, 26% of what they had heard, 30% of what they had seen, 50% of what they had seen and heard, 70% of what they had said, and 90% of what they had said as they were doing something (1987). It could be possible then, that the task of translating into the first language with the purpose of discovering the behaviour of polysemous words through contrast and comparison with the target language may actually help the learners retain more knowledge of the vocabulary and its semantics.
4. Conclusion
This paper has been an attempt to find the implications of metaphorical systems in teaching English as a foreign language. For this purpose, random and dated newspaper articles which appeared in both English and Japanese dailies, that happen to be about elections in Iran, were selected and their respective metaphorical systems were compared and contrasted. The findings point to the many similarities in concepts regarding the description of elections. This study attempted to formulate some implications metaphorical systems have for the foreign language learner. Though this research has not been exhaustive, an attempt has been made to find a use for the pervasive nature of metaphorical systems.
Metaphorical language is often a part-and-parcel of authentic material. In dealing with such material the foreign language learner is faced with the polysemous use of words. To be able to adequately grasp and use these words the learner requires a methodology that follows a systematic and reliable approach. This study into the nature of metaphorical systems and their pervasive nature in languages has shown that it may be one such approach. However, further research, especially empirically based evidence, is required to justify the use of metaphorical systems as a tool for teaching some areas of English as a foreign language.
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