Metaphor,a pervasive language phenomenon,has been our focusing research for a long time.From rhetoricians to psychologists and linguists,we begin to realize how important metaphor is in our cognition and thought.Nearly every corner of the society is closely related to metaphor and we can use the theories of metaphor to explain many areas.The author tends to get some inspirations from the research of metaphor and seek for in what way can metaphor help improve college students'discourse comprehension.
Chinese and American language and culture differ from each other in five ways as Hypotactic language vs. Paratactic language, Analytical thinking vs. Synthetic thinking, Direct thinking vs. Indirect thinking, Individualism vs. Collectivism and Ethics-based vs. Legislation-based. Their implications for college language teaching and learning are worth our attention.
Systemic-functional linguistics considers function and semantics as the basis of human language and communicative activity. In recent years, Systemic-functional linguistics has been applied in such areas as natural language processing, early language learning, language education, stylistics, foreign language teaching, translation and stylistics. It sheds new light on the further application of this linguistic theory in other fields.
