Title: Cantonese and English Bodies Do Talk: A Cross-Cultural, Metaphor-Metonymy Study on Body-Part Idioms
Abstract: Metaphoric and metonymic forms of language are important because they express underlying metaphoric and metonymic concepts. Metaphoric and metonymic language/concepts are also frequently combined. (For examples of pure metaphor, pure metonymy and combined metaphor/metonymy, see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980.) The results reported in this chapter show that teaching Cantonese L2 learners of English about the conceptual structure underlying the metaphoric/metonymic language of English body-part idioms (the 2Cs method) significantly improves their learning and retention of such idioms. These results also show that teaching them in addition about the similarities and differences between English and Cantonese body-part idioms (the 3Cs method) yet further strikingly improves their learning and retention of these idioms. All human beings have bodies, and this must account for at least much of the striking cross-linguistic similarities in idioms and other forms of metaphoric/metonymic language. The people who own those bodies however belong to differing cultures and this must account for at least much of the cross-linguistic variation also found in this area. The results about to be reported show that an effective L2 pedagogy, at least for idioms, needs to take account of both human, bodily constants and of human, linguistic/cultural variation.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 32
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