1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Proverbs are one of the most ancient and valuable parts of culture. They are vivid fossilsof human life. Proverbs exist in folk tales, literature, religious doctrines, and daily life.Proverbs have already been studied by many people. Most previous studies of proverbs areabout the collection and the edition of proverbs, the analysis of language and literaturecharacters of proverbs, the cognitive analysis of proverbs, and so on. This study mainlydiscusses conceptual metaphors of proverbs from perspective of cognition.As proverbs are widely used in daily life, people are familiar with them. But it is difficultto explain what on earth the definition of proverb is. Different dictionaries have differentdefinitions about proverb. Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines proverb as akind of concise common sayings that are widely used by people, or concise and meaningfulmaxims that are always repeated by people. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines proverbas old and widely used sayings......especially refers to those sentences which express practicaltheories, experience, and observed results clearly and concisely. Longman Dictionary ofContemporary English says proverbs are short maxims that are widely used to show people’swisdom. The sentences are short but meaningful, and they often have vivid images andrhythms which are easy to remember. Literary Terms says proverbs are short and popularsentences without authors. They are used to express facts or superstitions......proverbs exist inalmost all nations and have long history. Oxford Advanced Learner’s English ChineseDictionary defines proverb as popular used phrases or sentences that can give peoplesuggestions and explain truth.
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1.2 The Significance of this Study
Proverbs are important parts of culture. And proverbs have obvious national charactersbecause of some factors such as history, geography, customs, and religions. “When in Rome,do as the Romans do.” “Rome was not built in a day.” “All roads lead to Rome.” Obviously,these three proverbs all have relationships with Rome. That’s because Ancient Rome haddominated Great Britain for nearly 400 years, which has a great effect on Great Britain’shistory. So we can see many English proverbs about Rome. There are also many proverbsrelated to geography. As we all know, England is an island country, and its transportation atsea and fishing industry are developing. So many English proverbs have relationship withthem. Such as proverb “Never offer to teach fish to swim.” “The silly fish is caught twice bythe same bait.” “The best fish swim near the bottom.” As for China, there are many proverbsrelated to agriculture. For example, “It would be a harvest year if it snows heavily in winter.”In addition, each nation has its favorite animal. Though it is the same animal, it may havedifferent meanings in different cultures. Englishmen will use “A wolf in sheep’s clothing” torefer to those people who hide their true intentions while they behave kindly in front of people.In Chinese, we call this kind of people “smiling tiger”. It is known that Christianity is themajor religion in western countries, and it plays an important role in their daily life. So thereare many English proverbs that come from Bible. And there are also many proverbs related toChristianity. Such as “When God closes a door he may open a window somewhere.”
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2 Literature Review
2.1 The Theory of Transfer
The study of language transfer is an important part of the study of second languageacquisition. Researchers of the second language acquisition pay more attention to the study ofmother language’s effect on the study of second language. Odlin (2001:57) once said in hisbook Language Transfer that “since at least one century, language transfer is the centralproblem of the study of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and language study.”Zhao Shikai, the famous Chinese linguist, also said that “the transfer of mother language isthe essential problem of the study of second language acquisition.” The study of transferwhich started from 1950s was influenced by the authoritative theory of linguistics andpsychology. In 1950s and early 1960s, it was a prosperous period as for the study of languagetransfer. But it was declined in 1970s. While it rise abruptly in late 1980s. This processreflects two historical periods: the study lead by contrastive analyses with the frame ofbehaviorism, and the study lead by the hypothesis of inter language with the frame ofcognitive theory. During these two periods, researches mainly study these problems: 1)hypothesis of contrastive analyses and the study of language transfer; 2) markedness theoryand the study of language transfer; 3) cognitive psychology theory and the study of languagetransfer.
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2.2 The Theory of Conceptual Metaphor
As a cognitive phenomenon, metaphor has close relationship with human’s ways ofthinking and their development of thinking. And as a linguistic phenomenon, metaphor hasmany functions in the development of language. Researchers at home and abroad have already studied metaphor from differentperspectives, including philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, andso on. As in early study, metaphor was just regarded as a kind of figure of speech, so the studyabout it was limited in the analysis of rhetoric and literature. However, in recent years,metaphor is included in the category of cognitive linguistics. In cognitive linguists’ opinion,human’s system of concept also has the character of metaphor. The scope of the study onmetaphor was broadened by cognitive linguistics. And people’s understanding of metaphorhas changed a lot, which promotes the development of metaphorical theory.Metaphor’s transforming to cognition started from Richards, and the Metaphor We LiveBy written by George Lakoff and Johnson (1980) symbolized the new era of the study ofmetaphor. They helped people to understand metaphor more comprehensive and systematicfrom broaden perspective.
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3 Methodology .... 16
3.1 Research Questions ...... 16
3.2 Subjects ....... 16
3.3 Instruments....... 16
3.4 Research Process .... 18
4 Results and Discussion....... 20
4.1 The Analysis of Data .... 20
4.1.1 The Analysis of the First Questionnaire about English Proverbs ..... 20
4.1.2 The Analysis of the Second Questionnaire abouts........ 23
4.2 Discussion on the Difference between English Proverbs and Chinese Proverbs....... 24
5 Conclusion........ 33
5.1 Major Findings ....... 33
5.2 Implications....... 35
5.3 Limitations ........ 37
4 Results and Discussion
4.1 The Analysis of Data
From above table, we can see clearly that there are 24 students whose score below 30, 32from 30 to 40, 55 from 40 to 50, 42 from 50 to 60, 20 from 60 to 70, 14 from 70 to 80, 10from 80 to 90. And there is only three student that got the score above 90. The highest scoreof this test is 90. The table shows that the students’ knowledge on English proverbs is verylimited and needs to improve. The teachers should pay more attention to this problem andemphasize more in the future. It can be seen clearly by the results of this questionnaire from figure 4.1. Unfortunately,most of the subjects’ scores are below 60. It indicates that students don’t have a goodknowledge of English proverbs which are very important actually. And subjects can choseright answers of some proverbs because they are widely used. While they had no idea tochoose which answer for most of the proverbs because they have little knowledge aboutculture, and they also choose some answers based on their native cultural knowledge whichare wrong answers.
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Conclusion
From this survey, it turns out that native cultural negative transfer really has an effect onChinese students’ acquisition of English proverbs. These twenty five questions about Englishproverbs are all about cultural knowledge in English proverbs. Though they are not enough,they can reflect students’ knowledge about culture. As for these questions, students didn’t gethigh scores which reflects that they are not familiar with English culture. And it turns out thatmost students don’t have a good knowledge about the difference between English culture andnative language culture. Students are easy to be confused when facing cultural knowledgewhich are distinctive in China and England. As China and England have different culture,English proverbs and Chinese proverbs sometimes have the same meaning but differenttargets, or on the contrary, they have the same targets but different meanings. Students don’thave a good knowledge about it. From the first questionnaire about English proverbs we cansee that cultural negative transfer truly has an effect on Chinese students’ acquisition ofEnglish proverbs. And an important finding is that students are more familiar with Englishproverbs related to color and animal than that related to geography, history, religion, andcustom. That’s because proverbs with color and animal are used more often than others,which indicates that if teachers pay more attention to these proverbs and culture, students willknow more about different cultures.
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Reference (omitted)