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Understanding of metaphor among 8 to 13 year-old children
Author
Tan, Swee Suan
Supervisor
Chan, Ronald
Abstract
This research aims to arrive at a working definition of metaphor and a further understanding of the variables that determine children's understanding of metaphors. In the course of this research, 5 popular children's songs were used to elicit both verbal and written responses from 12 subjects who ranged between the age of eight to thirteen. Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) notion of the 'deep structure' of metaphors was decided upon as the basis on which the test instrument would be analysed. The subjects' responses were then matched against the respective 'deep structures'. Two significant findings are that metaphorical ability is likely to be an ability in its own right, independent of vocabulary and fluency and secondly, the metaphorical deep structure of the metaphors is a variable that could account for differential understanding of metaphors among the different age groups. An unexpected finding is that satisfactory explanations of any metaphorical expression must themselves be entailments of the conceptual metaphor from which the expression is derived.
Date Issued
1996
Call Number
P301.5.M48 Tan
Date Submitted
1996