Abstract
As metaphors are being ‘’revealed’’ as an inexhaustible well of indicators of cognitive processes and, thus linguistic and cultural particularities, they serve as an excellent example of the necessity for raising cross-cultural and linguistic awareness in ELT. Therefore, their magic will be unravelled through the comparison of a number of English and Croatian metaphors and related classroom activities.
1. Introduction: creativity as a must in the 21st century teaching environment
All teachers are familiar with the concept of creativity: planning a lesson is a creative act. It seems rather hard nowadays to motivate generations of students to become more involved in creative learning, since technological gadgets provide hours of fun. Yet, a variety of carefully selected materials, not necessarily found in the sanitized world of text books, are sure to grab their attention and reveal the pleasure of learning. There are many reasons why creativity in the language classroom is worth both students and teachers’ effort:
• Creative environment promotes learning – people cannot learn effectively if they are not allowed to be creative: the so-called end-in-itself activities are definite to produce resistance on students’ part, since they cannot see the point in doing them.
• Creative work paves the way for genuine communication – while doing creative tasks students use the language in its original form, which prepares them for using language outside the classroom.
• Creativity improves self-esteem – by using a variety of compensation strategies to make up for the lack of language in a communicative situation, students find their own solutions to linguistic problems, which boosts self-esteem and, consequently, motivation.
• Creative tasks bring a breath of fresh air into language classrooms – creative tasks make classroom work a more varied and enjoyable experience for both teachers and students.
2. The role of figurative language in ELT 2.1 Metaphor in theory
In classical rhetoric, the term metaphor comes from the Greek meta, which means change and pherein, which means to carry. Therefore, a metaphor involves a carrying across of meaning between two apparently dissimilar objects. By saying that your love is a red rose, you transfer some qualities of a rose to your feelings of love to create a vivid picture in the mind.
In recent years the study of metaphor has extended to linguistics and cognitive psychology. Lakoff and Johnson’s seminal work, Metaphors we live by (1980), revolutionized the view of metaphors. In their view metaphors are linguistic reflections of our own conceptions of the world. Since there are so many important concepts in our life, such as emotions and time, that are either abstract or not clearly delineated in our experience, we try to understand them by means of other more concrete concepts. For example, the metaphorical concept or conceptual metaphor Time is money reflects the view of the concept of time typical for modern Western culture. Time in our culture, just like money, is a valuable commodity: we both understand and experience time as something that can be spent, spared, wasted and saved. This particular concept gave birth to many metaphorical expressions, such as He’s running out of time; The flat tire cost me an hour, etc.
The understanding of abstract concepts takes place within domains of basic human experience, which is a product of our bodies, our interactions with both our physical environment and other people within our culture. Basic kinds of experience are products of human nature: some are universal and some vary from culture to culture.
2.2. Why teach metaphorical language?
The reasons for introducing metaphorical language in ELT are, as follows: • It is an effective way of expanding students’ vocabulary: Once students
learn the literal meaning of words, they can extend their vocabulary by using these words figuratively (e.g. to give birth, to get marching orders).
60 • It provides a clever strategy for organising new vocabulary to be learnt: 61 by creating metaphorical sets, teachers can help students to organize
and remember new words.
• It is a window into different cultures: values and assumptions of a certain culture are reflected in the language. Raising cultural awareness plays an important role in the process of foreign language acquisition.
2.3. Cultural Variation in Metaphor
There appear to be two large categories of causes that bring about the cultural variation. One is the broader cultural context and the other is the natural and physical environment in which a culture is located.
2.4.1. The Traditional View of Idioms
Idioms are assumed to be a matter of lexicon that is independent of any conceptual system. The core conception of idioms can be represented in the following figure:
Special idiomatic meaning: ‘die’
The meanings of the linguistic forms: ‘kick’ ‘the’ ‘bucket’
Linguistic forms and their syntactic properties: kick the bucket (no passive, etc.)
2.4.2. The Cognitive Linguistic View of Idioms
In the following examples we will find many idioms related to the concept of fire, such as spark off, snuff out, burn the candle at both ends, etc. that do not contain the word itself. These suggest that it is the concept of fire, and not the individual words themselves that participate in the process of creating idiomatic expressions. An idiom is not just an expression that has a meaning that is somehow special in relation to the meanings of its constituting parts, but it arises from our more general knowledge of the world embodied in our conceptual system.
2.4.3. Idioms Based on Metaphor, Conventional Knowledge and Metonymy
A conceptual metaphor is not the only cognitive mechanism that can motivate idioms. To see how two further mechanisms-conceptual metonymy and conventional knowledge- are also involved in this process,
we should turn to another conceptual domain: that of the human hand. For instance, the idiom hold one’s hand means wait and see. This particular meaning arises in a large measure as a result of the metonymy THE HAND STANDS FOR ACTIVITY. But we also appear to have further conventional knowledge associated with holding one’s hand. When we hold our hands (i.e., when we arrest the movement of the hand), we have temporarily stopped an activity. We wait to see whether to continue or how to continue the activity that we are engaged in.
2.5. Most Recent Pedagogical Applications of Metaphor Theory in ELT
If we raise students’ awareness of metaphor, we can accelerate their vocabulary uptake. To do so, time and effort need to be invested in (a) drawing students’ attention to lexical items and (b) stimulating storage of those items in long-term memory. Elaboration is an umbrella term for a range of mental operations that a learner might perform in connection with a lexical term. It includes the (1) association of the item with a particular context, (2) connecting it with already known L2 items belonging to the same lexical field, (3) comparing it with items in the mother tongue that happen to be similar in form or meaning, (4) associating it with a mental picture and so on.
The last stage of elaboration has become known in memory modelling as dual coding, where the mental picture serves as a pathway for remembering the lexical item. For example, telling students that the expression, show someone the ropes, goes back to the scene of an experienced sailor showing a novice around a ship, becomes useful because it is likely to call up in the student’s mind a mental picture of that concrete scene.
3. Teaching Activities involving Idiomatic Expressions
In this chapter we will try to show how Croatian students can breeze through their English vocabulary uptake. The expressions in question will be idioms related to weather and colours, since their appearance is nearly universal in all languages. We will come across various differences in their range, elaboration and emphasis on either their inherent metaphor or metonymy. We will also make an attempt at comparing the above mentioned idioms in English and Croatian by placing emphasis on the importance of their elaboration i.e. dual coding and raising students’ cultural awareness regarding these two languages and cultures.
62 3.1. Weather Idioms 63
1 Students are asked to look at the common weather symbols and then
answer the questions.
i ii iii iv v
snow clouds thunderstorm hail shower
Which of the symbols describes?
a a brief period when it rains?______
b a fall of hard, frozen raindrops? ______ etc.
2a Students are asked to read the headline from a newspaper article
and to make a prediction of what the article is about.
2b Then students read the related article to see if their prediction was
correct or not. Then they are required to underline the words connected with the weather and are encouraged to guess the metaphorical meanings.
3a Afterwards they are asked to complete the following definitions of
the phrases in a)-e) with one word.
i to be snowed under: to have too much to do and not enough ______ to
do it
ii to cast a cloud over something: to make people feel less optimistic
or________ about a situation etc.
3b After the phases (1) and (2) of the elaboration process have been
introduced, students are asked to think of the equivalent expressions in Croatian. Afterwards their answers are checked.
As an additional tool for the long-term storage of the new items, they are all associated with an appropriate mental picture. For example:
English Idioms: Croatian equivalents: to be snowed under with
work
to be overwhelmed by, swamped with work; these verbs are used in a metaphorical way. There is no idiomatic expression in Croatian that uses the same verb, but the mental picture of having so much work that one feels like being under a snow-drift is very well understood by Croatians. We use dual coding: drawing attention to the literal meaning of the phrasal verb “snow up” and the metaphorical meaning of the other “snow” phrasal verb “be snowed under”
to cast a cloud over something
to cast a shadow over something; another source domain is used in Croatian: a shadow. It is very similar in form and meaning to the English one. Drawing attention to its literal meaning of e.g. a cloud covering the sun and its figurative meaning facilitates its uptake and storage.
In conclusion, the selected idioms in both languages are both predominantly metaphor- and conventional knowledge-based. The metaphorical elaborations underlining both kinds of idioms are not overlapping in any compared pair and there is an abundant variation in the range of metaphors. Still, there are a few rather similar idioms: to cast a cloud, a hail of bullets.
3.2. Colour Idioms
1 Students are asked to answer what the following colours make them think
of. grey red white green black
64 2 Then they look at the chart showing the colour associations in English. 65 Grey red white green black boredom dullness anger embarrassment passion shame innocence purity environment lack of experience nature youth grief hatred hopelessness
3a Students are asked to combine the colour words with the nouns in the box
to make English expressions.
area carpet fingers humour lie light market a black.... b black... c green.... d green.... e grey... f red...
g white...
3b They are asked to match the expressions from 3a with the definitions. 3c In the following example we use the already well-known elaboration
process.
English collocations and idioms: Croatian equivalents:
white lie
an innocent, well-meant lie;
Croatian does not use a colour collocation. Special attention is drawn to the mental picture of the general associations attributed to the colour white in both English and Croatian and their connection with the expression’s overall figurative meaning.
to have green fingers
to be good and skilful at gardening
There is no equivalent colour collocation in Croatian. Making students aware of the associations given to the green colour in English and their involvement in the syntactic and semantic structure of the expression helps them understand, translate and memorize the phrase.
In conclusion, in Croatian and in English expressions overlap completely in the examples such as black humour, black market, to get the green light, while the two above shown are entirely different. This is due to the fact that both languages share the same broader cultural context and conventional knowledge. The compared expressions are both metaphor- and metonymy- based. Learning new idiomatic meanings does not pose any difficulty due to the usage of the same colour associations in both languages.
References
Kovecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press Lakoff, G., Johnson, M., (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Lazar, G. (2003). Meanings and Metaphors. Activities to practise figurative language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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