According to Richards(1965), conceptual metaphor is very dynamic and pervasive in our daily language. Since the theory is put forward and established, many scholars in applied linguistic and SLA field are attracted. They are in complete agreement that conceptual metaphor can be helpful for English language teaching and learning. Some scholars lessened their research scope to vocabulary teaching and explored its application to teaching polysemy, prepositions, idioms and word connections and so on. In their empirical studies, for example, Lazar (1996), even demonstrated specific teaching techniques based on conceptual metaphor theory.

     This paper tries to make a brief analysis on vocabulary teaching from the perspective of

conceptual metaphor. It first reviews the conceptual metaphor theory and relevant studies in this area. Then it analyzes the feasibility of using conceptual metaphor in English vocabulary teaching. Based on the feasibility analysis, and according to the author’s own teaching experience together with several scholars’ theories, four main English vocabulary teaching strategies of using conceptual metaphor theory are put forward.

2. Literature Review源'自:吹冰]'论-文'网"]www.chuibin.com

2.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory

Two excellent cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson launched a revolution on metaphor study in 1980. The book called Metaphors We Live by made a stir in the linguistic world. Metaphor has been studied by researchers in a completely new and different angle. Some cognitive linguists maintains that metaphors can facilitate our understanding of one conceptual domain. That is, we try to understand an abstract and complex conceptual domain like “life” or “theories” or “ideas”, through expressions which are related to another more specific and simple conceptual domain like “journey”, “building” or “food”(Lakoff & Johnson 1980).

Lakoff and Johnson (1980:3) argue that “metaphors are pervasive in everyday life, not only in language, but also in thought and action”.

     There are two main domains existing in conceptual metaphor, that is, source domain and target domain. Source domain usually refers to the conceptual domain where we can draw metaphorical expressions, whereas target domain refers to the conceptual domain that we aim to understand.

If learners want to know a conceptual metaphor, learners need to know the corresponding set of mappings. They exist between constituent elements of the source domain and the target domain. Typically conceptual metaphor uses a more abstract concept as its target and a more concrete concept as its source. The core of the working mechanism of conceptual metaphor is cross-domain mapping system. The mapping system is cognitive in nature.

According to the current theories, conceptual metaphor can be pided into three types: structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor.

Structural metaphor refers to cases “where one concept is metaphorically structured in terms of another. It is a conventional type of metaphor” (Lakoff, 1980:14). That is to say, structural metaphor often employs a concept from source domain to construct a concept from target domain.

Different from structural metaphor, orientational metaphor is not to structure one concept by using another concept. Instead it is to construct a whole system of concepts by using another concept. We intend to call them “orientational” metaphors because most of the metaphors have some relations with spatial orientation: UP-DOWN, IN-OUT,  FRONT-BACK,  ON-OFF, DEEP-SHALLOW(Gu Yueguo, 2007:134-138). 

     Ontological metaphor usually aims to conceptualize the abstract, hard-defined and shapeless concepts(like ideas, feelings, mental activities, event, and others) by associating the concrete and tangible things. The formed conceptual metaphors are defined as ontological metaphors( ontological conceptual metaphors) (Gu Yueguo, 2007: 60-61) .