本文是一篇语言学论文，本研究有两个局限性。首先，实验中的共同语言手势不像普通交流中那样自然。其次，手势的分类和设计是主观的。在我们的日常生活中，手势是伴随着语音自发产生的，它们是无意识地产生的，无需任何努力。
1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Metaphor is pervasive in our daily lives,particularly when people produce ametaphorical sentence in every three sentences of their spontaneous talk[1].Traditionally,metaphor is considered a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—amatter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language.Since Lakoff and Johnson publishedtheir book Metaphors We Live By(1980),metaphor has gained more and more attention incognitive linguistics.It is a significant conversion of metaphor study.At this point,peoplerealize that the ordinary conceptual system,in terms of how one both thinks and acts,isfundamentally metaphorical in nature[2].Subsequently,metaphor study has permeated intonearly every aspect of our life,making further and extensive research necessary,especially inthe field of language communication and cognition.
On the other hand,metaphor is also multimodal[3]and can also be found in gestures.Gestures,especially hand gestures spontaneously happen during our daily oralcommunication.Nevertheless,the research about gestures falls short of expectation.Núñezthought that gesture had been neglected in speech because the research about speech mainlyfocuses on abstract grammar,formalisms,and combinatorics,and there is insufficient roomfor“bodily production”speech.Experimental psychologists focus on the written and oralmodes of language,especially on lexical items and phonology.Moreover,spontaneousbehavior like gesture production is not easily operationalized and grasped[4].
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2 Research Objectives
This study is to use Chinese native speakers as participants to carry out the experiments.First,it attempts to explore the relation between metaphor,co-verbal gesture,and cognition,which affirms that co-verbal gesture is relevant to embodied experience,and the gestural datacomprises the independent evidence for the existence of conceptual metaphors.Second,it isto determine the role of co-verbal gestures in speech comprehension,and identify theinfluence of congruent and incongruent gestures on semantic processing.Then the relationbetween co-verbal gesture and language comprehension can be distinct.Third,it aims to findout the metaphor comprehension mechanism about how native speakers process metaphors.
语言学论文怎么写
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2 Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies on Metaphor
Metaphor has progressively occupied a vital position in cognitive linguistics,philosophy,and several other fields and it is widely acknowledged that metaphor is goes beyond language.This section elaborates the developmental phases of metaphor research and several metaphorcomprehension hypotheses.
2.1.1 Three Developmental Phases of Metaphor Studies
The three phases of metaphor involve the word,sentence and cognitive levels[9].
In the first phase,Aristotle pioneered systematic research on metaphor.In his view,metaphor is to use one thing to represent another.The metaphor is an implicit comparisonbetween things.According to his view,two figures in metaphor are in contrast or comparativerelation.He deemed that metaphor to be important,and people should maximize its features.Plato viewed metaphor differently which is a way to one’s emotion and merely an ornamentto language.The literal meaning is real and primary,while metaphoric meaning is subordinate.Regardless of how scholars weighed the substance of metaphor,they thought it only existedin language use.Conventional metaphor theory considers metaphor an unconventionallanguage expression that violates the normal language rules.It is based on similaritiesbetween different things,and it is a word or phrase expression that is considered a decorationin language.Therefore,metaphor is a rhetorical device and solely exists in the lexical aspect.
In the second phase,a distinguished theory known as the interaction theory was proposedby Richards[1]and revised by Black[10].Richards is the first scholar to introduce the cognitiveconcepts into metaphor research and regarded metaphor as a semantic phenomenon.However,he did not discover the cognitive function of metaphor.When people use a metaphor,theycombine the two thoughts of the same thing,and the outcome of the interaction of those twothoughts is called metaphor.Metaphor is the communication of thoughts and contexts.Nevertheless,he did not find out the interplay between them and the foundation of the process.It is worth noting that the thought is first mentioned in metaphor studies.His theory providesfoundation for researchers exploring metaphor on the cognitive level.
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2.2 Previous Studies on Co-verbal Gesture
Co-verbal gesture is intricately woven into our daily lives,but it is still an underexploredresearch field.The most studies of co-verbal gestures are related to language production orcomprehension.This section details its development,attributes,classifications,cognitivehypotheses,and the relation between co-verbal gesture and language.
2.2.1 The Development of Co-verbal Gesture Studies
In a broad sense,“gesture”can refer to any willful bodily movement;in a narrow sense,it refers to hand movement[18].Gestures are symbolic movements related to an ongoingconversation,narration,monologue,or speaker’s intentions(mainly refers to the movementsof the hands and upper limbs)[19].The present research aims at the narrow sense of gesture,orco-verbal gesture.
The relationship between gesture and speech received attention from the 1960s.Scholarsbegan to explore the gesture field from the perspective of cognition from eighties and ninetiesof the twentieth century.The gesture has failed to attract people’s attention for many reasons.It exists between well-established academic disciplines,making it easily neglected by people.In ancient times,a limited number of gestures were used and there were two fundamentalreasons why people did not use gestures.A long time ago,for one thing,it was restricted orprohibited.The theorists of rhetorical gestures since Quintilian have explicitly neglected andbanned the use of iconic gestures.Back then,pantomime actors would produce pantomimicperformances in ancient Greek dramas,which acted for the lower classes.To distinguishRoman orators from those pantomime performers,they had to control their bodily movements,unlike performers.For another thing,an argument opposed to use gestures too frequently tohave a good command of vocal language[6].
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3 Methodology........................................21
3.1 Research Questions............................21
3.2 Pretest and Research Materials.............................21
3.3 Experiment One:Visual Congruency............................22
4 Results................................27
4.1 The Results of Experiment One...................................27
4.1.1 Recognition of Co-verbal Gesture.............................27
4.2 The Results of Experiment Two..................................27
5 Discussion..............................32
5.1 The Tentative Evidence of Embodiment and Metaphoricity in Co-verbalGestures.....................................32
5.2 The Influences of the Congruency of Co-verbal Gesture on LanguageComprehension...........................33
5 Discussion
5.1 The Tentative Evidence of Embodiment and Metaphoricity inCo-verbal Gestures
The high agreement of co-verbal gestures matched with speech sentences in ExperimentOne,which indicated that people recognize gestures in the same way,and gestures indeedconvey meanings.Kendon proposed that gesticulation and speech were the two facets of theprocess of utterance.Language production can be reflected in two forms of activities,themovement of vocal organs and the movement of limbs.Gesture is not solely a movement ofbody,but also a symbol with meaning[20].Co-verbal gestures are flexible and unfixed,andthey are unlike languages that must abide by the rules.People from different countries canunderstand the common concepts by the similar gestures[57][64],which demonstrates gesturesare embodied and based on our experience.Even though some iconic gestures have differentmeanings in different cultures,but most of gestures are conveying similar meanings becauseour body experiences are alike.
Many studies support that the metaphors do not only lie in the language,but also inactions.To some extent,co-verbal gestures are the externalization of the thoughts.Theresearch that is conducted by Chui provided evidence that metaphorical thought is readilyconveyed by gesture exclusively or along with metaphoric speech in daily face-to-facecommunication.Metaphors are mental structures that are independent of language,whichsupport the general view that gesture and language are parts of the same system[51].Metaphoric gestures generally match with verbal expression,but they are not alwayssynchronized with the speech,and they are more reliable and faster than speech[64].Hence,sometimes people can better understand speaker’s thoughts according to gestures.A studyshows that metaphoric gestures not only match with metaphoric sentences,but also matchwith literal sentences[51].
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6 Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
This essay investigates the influences of the congruency of co-verbal gestures on thenative language comprehension and the differences between metaphors and literal sentencescomprehension.
Above all,the experiments testified that co-verbal gestures are based on human bodilyexperience.Although co-verbal gestures are not stereotypical,and unlike the language thathas the totally conventionalized and accepted form and meaning,the meanings of co-verbalgestures can be identified by people with universal experience.Co-verbal gestures are closelyrelated to the language and the cognitive system.Co-verbal gesture is the externalization ofembodied cognition which refers to cognition can influence the production of gesture.On theflip side,gesture has an effect on embodied cognition.Using the proper gestures can lightencognition burden and promote the information processing capacity and improvecomprehension.
In the second place,in the present study,the congruency of the co-verbal gestures is ofgreat importance in the language comprehension,even if the sentences in the experiments arein the native language and not impenetrable.In other experiments,the proficiency of languagecounts,but if the language level is lower,the efficiency is more distinctive.This findingsupplements to the prior studies,which indicates that congruent gestures will promotecomprehension regardless of language proficiency.In effect,incongruent gestures will hinderspeech processing,even though they do not prolong the reaction time.Incongruent gesturesmay supply wrong or meaningless information,which would place an additional burden onthe brain.By and large,the effects of gestures on different linguistic conditions are identical.Congruent gestures are beneficial to literal expression and metaphoric expression processing,and incongruent gestures inhibit the processing of both linguistic conditions.The onlydifference is that congruent gestures will make metaphor comprehension faster than literalsentences.
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