English Metaphor Comprehension and Conceptual Blending by Chinese EFL Learners: An ERP Study

The present study aims to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying English metaphor processing by Chinese EFL learners.Thirty participants were grouped based on their English proficiency.A sentence-final word paradigm was adopted with stimuli being of the X(s) be Y(s) form.Through a semantic judgment task, ERPs elicited by anomalous, metaphorical and literal sentence endings by subjects in both groups were compared and analyzed.The results support the conceptual blending theory in that all languages are processed with the same mechanism though costing different cognitive effort.What's more, results show that language proficiency does play a role in metaphor processing.English metaphors and literal expressions are not clearly distinguished cognitively for Chinese EFL learners with low level of proficiency.It is also suggested in the present study that learners with higher English proficiency spent relatively more cognitive resources in metaphor processing.