Metaphor and foreign language teaching

Abstract

This article gives special attention to how the understanding of some conceptual metaphors which are found in languages typologically different can contribute to the process of teaching and learning vocabulary. Our central issue is that man's philogenetical and ontogenetical history play an important role in the generation of the concepts. If it is possible to explain cross-linguistic commonalities between typologically unrelated languages based on conceptual metaphors, then learners are stimulated to gain knowledge about how language systems are organised. The main benefit of such focused instruction is that it can raise learner's awareness of the explicit knowledge that is being consciously constructed and eventually transferred to different languages encouraging him to reach a higher level of performance.