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Статья "Метафора как средство обогащения словарного запаса"
| Статья "Метафора как средство обогащения словарного запаса" Островерхова Л.К. учитель англ. языка ГУ СОШ № 7 г. Семей Metaphor as a Means of Enlarging English Vocabulary The mastery of vocabulary plays a great role in the development of students’ speaking skills. But there are numerous problems in the formation of their lexical skills. One of them is the absence of necessary variety of lexis which makes students’ speech poor. Therefore only purposeful work with lexical units from the beginning of presentation can provide the use of them in oral speech. The English language is polysemantic. The phenomenon of polysemy makes learning of new English vocabulary difficult because a lot of English words have more than one meaning. It is out of economy that polysemy exists in the language. Word meaning can be expanded by means of analogy and metaphor. Human beings think and talk metaphorically. Metaphor is a norm of communicating, not an exception. In simple words, a polysemous word usually has a core meaning and all other meanings come from it by means of metaphor. The word meaning expansion works like a ripple, which starts from a centre and extends outward. The centre or the core may denote a physical entity in the material world with a rather clear focus. Then it is extended to refer to other physical entities which it resembles. Finally, its meaning may be broadened to abstract ideas by metaphor. For example, using the word “leaf”, its meaning expansion can be shown with a ripple diagram. “Leaf” is a green, thin, and flat piece of a plant attached to a stem. The core meaning of “leaf” is the thing and flat structure on the stem of a plant. From that comes the next layer of usage referring to anything that resembles a plant leaf, such as pages of a book, pieces of metal, or the folds of a table. From the meaning of “a page of a book”, it is extended to mean “a period of a person’s life”, which is often recorded in a book. There are phrases like “turn over a new leaf” or “take a leaf out of somebody’s book”. The meaning of a word will often radiate from the centre along several lines by focusing on different features of the original object. This diagram can aid understanding and memory supplementing a verbal explanation that may capture only the most salient meaning of the word. This expansion shown on the diagram also traces the history of the development of the word. This kind of a diagram can successfully be applied in teaching new vocabulary. At the beginning, the teacher helps the students become aware of the following facts: - The majority of the English words have more than one meaning. - The meanings of a word are often related. There is almost always a core meaning with all the other meanings coming from it. - Imagination and association are techniques to link the meanings together. When explaining the last two points, the teacher introduces the three-layer diagram and works with the students in drawing detailed diagrams for a few words. There are several benefits in using the three-layer diagram in vocabulary teaching. 1. It teaches students a powerful strategy in vocabulary comprehension, retention, and production. They learn how to make associations and to use their imaginations in the learning process. 2. It gives the students an understanding of a word. The diagramming can illustrate not only many meanings of a word, but also the links between those meanings. With care in selection, it can also demonstrate collocations and idiomatic usage. Through the links provided in a diagram, students will more easily understand an abstract or alien concept. 3. It is helpful in fostering target-culture awareness. Metaphorical thinking and language use are universal, but the actual associations are culture-specific. In diagramming the links between the meanings of a word, the teacher is also leading students to look at the world in the same way that native speakers do. This is especially true of collocations, set expressions, and idioms. There isn’t one best method to teach vocabulary. There are several helpful approaches one may use to acquire and enrich vocabulary, and the ripple diagram is surely one of them. When learning new words with the help of such diagrams students learn about the use of metaphor in the English language. The term “metaphor” means transference of some quality from one object to another. It is still widely used to designate the process in which a word acquires a derivative meaning. Language as a whole has been figuratively defined as a dictionary of faded metaphors. By transference of meaning the word “grasp” “get” and “see” come to have the derivative meaning of “understand”. When these words are used with that meaning we can only register the derivative meaning existing in the semantic structures of the words. Though the derivative meaning is metaphorical in origin, there is no stylistic effect because the primary is no longer left. A metaphor becomes a stylistic device when two different phenomena (things, events, ides, actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived of these properties. Such an impression generally results when the creator of the metaphor finds in the two corresponding objects certain features which to his eye have something in common. Metaphor is one of the most potent means of creating images. An image is a perception of an abstract notion already existing in the mind. To create an image means to bring a phenomenon from the highly abstract to the essentially concrete. The identification is most clearly observed when the metaphor is embodied either in an attributive word, as in “pearly teeth”, ”voiceless sounds”, or in a predicative word-combination, as in the following example “ Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still” Linguists consider that transference of one name of one object onto another proceeds from their similarity (of shape, color, function) , or closeness (of material existence , cause/ effect, instrument/ result, part/ whole relations) Each type of intended substitution results in a stylistic device called also a trope. “Trope” is a word or phrase used in a figurative way. Therefore “Metaphor” is a transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects as in the “pancake”, or “ball’, or “volcano” for “the sun”, “silver dust” for “stars”, “blanket” or “veil” for “the sky”. Metaphorization can also be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Thus metaphors which are absolutely unexpected or unpredictable are called “genuine” metaphors. Those which are commonly used in speech and therefore are sometimes even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language are “trite” metaphors or “dead” metaphors. Their predictability therefore is apparent. “Genuine” metaphors are regarded as belonging to language-in-action, i.e. speech metaphors. “Trite” metaphors belong to the language-as-a-system, i.e. language proper, and are usually fixed in dictionaries as units of the language. Here are some examples of “trite” metaphors: “ a ray of hope”, “floods of tears”, “ a storm of indignation” , “ a flight of fancy” , “ a gleam of mirth” , “ a shadow of a smile” and the like. A worn out metaphor can also be called a “dead” metaphor. A ”dead” metaphor is a word or expression that has been so much used that its original figurative meaning has been forgotten. For example “a skyscraper”, which stands for “a many-storied building”, used to be a genuine metaphor, but nowadays it is used so often that we don’t even notice its originality. A worn out metaphor has been used so much and for so long time that it has lost the impact it once had. The first person who compared teeth to pearls or a government to a ship had good ideas, but today these ideas have lost their freshness. If a metaphor involves between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with “personification” which is often used in poetry and fiction. When studying different types of metaphors students start to understand that words in the language are used not only directly but indirectly (figuratively). A word acquires a figurative meaning in addition to its primary or dictionary meaning. For example the word “spring” has got a dictionary (primary) meaning “a season of the year” and a connotative (additional) meaning “a new life” or “new beginnings”. These knowledge helps them enlarge their vocabulary and realize the fact that a great deal of English words are polysemantic (have more than one meaning). It also helps them to vary their speech and teaches them to be more attentive to the English word. When studying the development of a word from the core (primary) meaning students can trace its history and together with it to remember all possible new meanings which the word acquired in the process of its long life. One more positive effect of learning new vocabulary in such a way is the existence of association connections between the different meanings of one word. Association is a connection which appears under certain conditions between two or more psychic phenomena. The appearance of one part of association regularly leads to the appearance of another one. In the investigations devoted to the problems of association processes it is noted that these processes provide memorization and reproduction of different phenomena in a particular connection and sequence. Memorization based on associations is the best way to remember new vocabulary for a long time and to be able to reproduce it easily in spoken and written language. | |
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Понедельник, 2024-11-18, 9:16 PM
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