Cognitive and contrastive linguistics in TEFL

Olga · Post by **Olga** » Fri Mar 12, 2004 10:31 am

I am looking for contact with teachers of English and researchers who are interested in the issue of using cognitive linguistics (e.g. metaphors) and contrastive linguistics in teaching English as a Second / Foreign Language. Also, read my earlier post about advance organizers.

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 4:04 am

THE BACKGROUND: I was recently asked to come up with an activity to practise superlative adjectives. I browsed through the defining vocabularies in a couple of dictionaries for "ideas", and came up with a list of questions that students could ask each other regarding their life experiences, such as:

What's the scariest movie you've ever seen?
What's the worst nightmare you've ever had?
What's your happiest memory?

THE "INSIGHT"(!): After the class, I realized that the "memory" sentence was quite different structurally to all the other sentences...but that "What's the happiest memory you've ever had?" would've been unnecessarily long (doubtless because memories are necessarily past, and don't therefore need the addition of "you've ever had"), hence my subconscious preference for the shorter alternative.

The "nightmare" sentence, interestingly, could conceivably appear in both long and short forms:

What's your worst nightmare?
What's the worst nightmare you've ever had?

However, the shorter sentence cannot really be taken to be referring to a past experience, even though structurally it is similar to the shorter "memory" sentence (and literal nightmares are as past as memories are).

The shorter "nightmare" sentence is, rather, metaphorical, and would seem to need to have additional "lexicogrammar" ("...you've ever had"), and a change of determiner from "your" to "the", to make it become literal (and past); whereas "memory" needs no such additions.

It would perhaps be interesting to investigate the lexicogrammatical constraints operating on other literal meanings vs metaphors (books on metaphor seem to mainly deal with declarative, propositional/philosophical/truth-like statements/equations)... obviously, a lot of information can be found in better dictionaries.

A quick search of my Seiko electronic Oxford ALDCE showed that 60% of the examples of "nightmare" were metaphorical (as a native speaker I didn't need to consciously analyze the co-text in each example to reach this figure, however).

THE APOLOGY: Just thought this might be interesting, and get the ball rolling here...

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 12:50 pm

A lot of English doesn't make sense unless it is interpreted from a metaphorical viewpoint. How is the learner to understand phrases such as:

Steer clear, come up against a problem, you fell right into that, leave your troubles behind you?

The answer is that there is a metaphore of travel underlying English. If you encourage your students to think of themselves traveling along a path, all will become clear.

This is also the reason Native English speakers tend to say, "I went to Krakow last week," not "I was in Krakow last week," which Polish speakers prefer to say.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:01 pm

We'd say "I was in Krakow last week"
if we are going to talk about something that happened there, or if the being in Krakow is more important than the jourrney.

"So you're from Krakow! Wow! I was there last week!"

as opposed to

"Did you discuss that matter with them?"
"Yea, I went to Krakow last week, and we sorted it all out."

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:50 pm

It's interesting how these threads evolve...I wasn't sure about "contrastive linguistics", so I waffled a bit about metaphor in English...Andrew alludes to a path metaphor, but his examples don't seem to be metaphorical (interesting and contrastive between two languages though they are), unless we are to take it that Polish doesn't have "the" path metaphor?; and Stephen seems to have taken "I was in Krakow last week" as being meant to represent English (I suspect it is rather just a translation of the Polish equivalent), and offers us an analysis of it vs. "I went to Krakow last week"!

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 7:15 pm

Excuse me, but my examples are metaphorical. You can only literally steer clear of an object in the road. If you steer clear of an issue, then you are using language metaphorically. The same goes for the other examples that I gave.

As for the Krakow example, in English we tend to emphasise the action of going to a place rather than being there. Its not strictly speaking wrong to say, "I was in Krakow last week," but it sounds slightly odd.

However, I agree with Stephen's analysis of that one. There are cases where you would use "was", but the point is, there would have to be a good reason for doing so.

Keep to the journey metaphore, and it opens a whole world of metaphore to your students and keeps them on the streight and narrow.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:08 pm

Am I the only person who sees nothing odd about I was in Krakow last week? I don't think the speaker needs a good reason for doing so, unless a desire to emphasis being in Krakow rather than going is somehow unusual, and I see no reason why it should be. I'm not convinced that English speakers necessarily prefer to emphasise the being rather than the going.

What if the speaker went to Krakow last year and came back the day before yesterday?

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 12:05 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:Excuse me, but my examples are metaphorical. You can only literally steer clear of an object in the road. If you steer clear of an issue, then you are using language metaphorically. The same goes for the other examples that I gave.

Sorry, Andrew, for not being clearer by what I meant by your "examples" - I was referring to your "I went to Krakow" vs "I was in Krakow" sentences, rather than the italicized "dictionary citation forms" preceding them (steer clear of etc).

Would you care to tell us what is metaphorical about "I went to/was in Krakow last week"?!

The discussion here now has not got much to do with metaphor at all really, has it (you naughty boys)! But that's more Stephen's fault than yours!

Metaphor as I understand it is e.g. leave your troubles behind you > PROBLEMS ARE (and can be dealt with i.e. dumped like) UNWANTED BELONGINGS.

Wow, I got to use those nifty capitals then, just like Mr Lakoff!!

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:49 am

Duncan wrote:

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 9:50 am

Would you care to tell us what is metaphorical about "I went to/was in Krakow last week"?!

Nothing is strictly speaking metaphorical about this, but we still tend to talk about travel to a place because of the underlying travel metaphore that runs through English.

Duncan Powrie · Post by **Duncan Powrie** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 12:31 pm

Ah okay, fair enough! This is a contrastive linguistics thread too, isn't it, so please feel free to continue posting stuff about English vs. Polish generally, Andrew!

What you said is actually quite interesting! Do you know Olga, by the way (seeing as you are both in Poland)? Polish teachers generally seem to be very good at both speaking and teaching English, don't they!

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:30 pm

lolwhites,

Perhaps I'm a little confused, but I don't see anything odd about it either. I also do not quite believe that any "good reason" or exception is required to use it. There are just too many reasons for which "I was in..." would apply, and not in any "odd" manner at all.

Also Andrew, if you don't mind, which source are your ideas about the metaphor from? Just curious. Many of your applications of the word 'metaphorically' seem to be synonyms of "figuratively":

"You can only literally steer clear of an object in the road. If you steer clear of an issue, then you are using language metaphorically."

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 7:04 pm

Good point, wjserson, perhaps I am using language too loosely. What is the difference between idiomatic, metaphorical and figurative language?

LarryLatham · Post by **LarryLatham** » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:33 pm

Nice thread, although it may diverge from Olga's original request. Perhaps the rest of you, like me, are having some trouble understanding exactly what it is that Olga wants. Maybe you can elaborate, Olga?

But in the meantime, Andy's question is a good one. It probably will be helpful, for us as teachers at least, to keep in mind which is which. Figurative language and metaphor seem to be very similar, since both involve non-literal meanings. However, wjserson has challenged (successfully, I think) the notion that they might be the same. But, for the life of me, I don't think I could clearly explain the difference. Maybe, William, you have your finger on something that will help us get it straight? The best I can come up with is that metaphor is perhaps the use of figurative language to achieve another purpose. The figurative language is merely non-literal. But I think there must be a better way to put it.

Idiom is sufficently different, though, being generally thought of as common expressions used by native speakers, where the final meaning of the expression would not be inferred from the meanings of the individual words in the expression. There must be overlap, however. A particular expression could, I think, involve idiom and metaphor or figurative language simultaneously. That may be where the confusion between them occurs most.

Larry Latham

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:31 am

Well, actually, I have no idea if they're the same or not. I do notice that Andrew's use of what he's referring to as 'metaphor' is sometimes a simple action used figuratively :

"I'm going to kick your ass!" "Who cut the cheese?"
"I lossed my mind." "Put a sock in it."

Rarely are these sentences used literally. I'm not SIMPLY going to kick your posterior, I'm going to physically harm you greatly. I don't care who literally cut the cheese... I always used the term "figurative use" or "non-literal use" of verbs.

Can we actually call these above examples metaphors? Don't metaphors usually involve implicit comparisons such as when we use "a glaring error", "a sea of troubles" and "time is a thief" (notice that traditional metaphors seem to involve nouns whereas "kicking ass" and "losing my mind" are more verbal products?)

Let me know.

Wjserson