Abstract:

While in recent years quite a few studies have been devoted to raising second and foreign language (L2) learners’ metaphor awareness and developing their metaphorical competence, insufficient attention has been paid to the effect of higher metaphor awareness on the level of L2 competences and little analysis has been made of learning materials that use metaphor processing among other pedagogical techniques. The article reinforces the importance of raising metaphor awareness of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students majoring in economics and management. We suggest that metaphor awareness is pivotal in improving cognitive-linguistic and discourse competences of ESP learners. Following the ideas of the 21st century skills framework that requires that cognitive as well as communicative competences, including foreign languages (L2), should receive equal emphasis in the curriculum, this study is based on the assumption that the development of effective L2 learning techniques should be underpinned by the principle of interdependence between language, cognition, and communication, which allows for the development of both cognitive and discourse competences. It is argued that a dual cognitive-linguistic nature of conceptual metaphor learned and taught in the context of professional communication or specialist discourse is a relevant innovative pedagogical technique integrating the priorities of the 21st century education. The first research hypothesis of this study is that cognitive metaphor workings awareness built by purpose-built activities can facilitate understanding and acquiring not only economic lexicon but whole economic theories in a foreign language by giving learners access to such a sophisticated cognitive learning technique as metaphorical model or frame. Our second research hypothesis is that exploiting discourse building metaphor potential in a system of learning activities for understanding metaphor discourse strategies is likely to improve discourse competence of L2 ESP learners. The design of the research comprises a literature review and an empirical study. A case study method was chosen as the most appropriate for the research objectives, allowing for the use of a number of qualitative as well as quantitative methods. The data for the empirical part of the research came from three sources: content analysis of MGIMO-University ESP learning materials for economics and management students that integrate raising metaphor awareness activities, participant observation, testing and examination, and student self-assessment survey, coupled with an interpretive methodology to investigate the effect of metaphor technique on improving students’ cognitive-linguistic and discourse competences. As a result, a variety of metaphor-built activities are suggested and metaphor integrating ESP learning materials are analysed and critiqued. The implications of using such activities by L2 ESP learners to cognise economics and its lexicon and understand economic discourse strategies are discussed.

Keywords:

Metaphor awareness, cognitive competence, discourse competence, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), metaphor-based learning activities, the case of MGIMO-University.