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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study
The research of metaphor has a long and rich history dating back to the time of ancientGreece. Metaphor in Greek means “carry something across” or “transfer”. In the traditionalview, metaphor was regarded as decorative or fancy speech, a matter of language andlinguistic phenomenon. From the beginning of 1970s, the study of metaphor encounters adrastically intensive movement from a figurative device to a matter of thought andunderstanding and a fundamental aspect of discourse programming (Pollio, Fine & Barlow,1977). Since then, metaphor has attracted lots of attention from different fields, such aspsychology, philosophy, linguistics, pedagogy, sociology, neurology, etc., (Lakoff & Johnson,1980; Low, 1988; Ortony, 1993; Cameron & Low, 1999; Boers, 2000; Sperber & Wilson,2001; Littlemore, 2001; Bailey, 2003; Kimmel, 2004). The studies of metaphor reached aclimax in the 1970s, which was called “metaphormania” by Mark Johnson (Yu Ning, 1998).In 1980, Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson was a first attemptto systematically challenge the traditional view, which has led the research into a new era ofcognitive metaphorology.“According to the cognitive theory, metaphor is one of the fundamental cognitivemechanisms which we employ to conceptualize or categorize the world. Shedding off theornamental function, metaphor is deemed as a way of thinking by the cognitive linguists”(Ding Chuan, 2007, p. 1).With the rise and spread of cognitive linguistics, some researchers begin to note theimportance of metaphor in language learning. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claimed thatconceptual metaphors formed the basis of much human thought because they allowed alllanguage users to think about abstract concepts in concrete terms. When referring to L2learners, Danesi pointed out that “the true sign that the learner has developed communicativeproficiency is the ability to metaphorize in the target language” (1986, p. 9). Later on, Low(1988) argued that the ability to produce and comprehend metaphor should be given animportant place in L2 learning, because metaphor was in general use to aid comprehension,extend thoughts, shed new light on old issues, compel attention, and clarify ideas. In theprocess of employing metaphors, language learners could express their creativity andoriginality (Gardner, Kircher, Winner & Perkins, 1975) and open up new areas ofconversation (Dirven, 1985). In 1996, Cameron maintained that metaphor could helpchildren’s acquisition of languages and enrich their expressions.
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1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Study
Up to now, a certain amount of studies have already been conducted on metaphoriccompetence abroad. In the field of EFL learning and teaching, the theoretical studies onmetaphoric competence have been at the center of attention, which mainly concentrate on thedefinitions of MC (e.g., Gardner & Winner, 1978; Pollio & Smith, 1980; Danesi, 1986; Low,1988), the role of MC in SLA (e.g., Hoffman, 1983; Danesi, 1986; Low, 1988; Cameron &from memory provided theoretical support for a link between divergent thinking and fluencyof metaphor interpretation. Later, Littlemore (1998) suggested that MC depended on thepsychological processes of loose analogical reasoning and divergent thinking.Until now, some studies have been conducted to explore the relation between creativityand metaphori