Ohio State nav bar

Buckeye East Asian Linguistics Forum

Oval
October 21, 2016
All Day
Mershon Center, Room 120, 1501 Neil Avenue

 http://u.osu.edu/beal/beal-forum/

Keynote speaker (2:00--3:30):

The compilation and analysis of a metaphor-annotated corpus of Mandarin Chinese

 

Xiaofei Lu

 

Department of Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University

 

This study aims to adapt and evaluate the reliability of Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrjie Universiteit (MIPVU; Steen et al. 2010) for Mandarin Chinese, to compile a metaphor-annotated corpus using the adapted procedure, to examine the distribution of metaphor-related words across Chinese texts in three different written registers: news texts, fiction, and academic texts, and to compare out results against those obtained from the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus (VUAMC, Steen et al., 2010). MIPVU was initially designed for identifying metaphor in English discourse, but has been shown to be applicable to Dutch with some necessary adjustments made to address issues specific to Dutch (Pasma 2012). Our assessment of the replicability of MIPVU for Mandarin Chinese adds to the groundbreaking methodological contribution that Steen et al. (2010) has made to metaphor research. The metaphor-annotated corpus of Mandarin Chinese contributes a valuable language resource for Chinese metaphor researchers, and our analysis of the distribution of metaphor-related words in the corpus offers useful new insight into the use of cross-linguistic and cross-register variation in metaphor distribution. Potential applications of the corpus in metaphor analysis, language teaching, and natural language processing will also be discussed.

 

 

Bio

 

Xiaofei Lu is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Asian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where he directs the graduate programs in the Department of Applied Linguistics. He was appointed Gil Watz Early Career Professor in Language and Linguistics in 2012-2016. He is also currently Yunshan Chair Professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and Guest Professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from The Ohio State University in 2006. His research interests include corpus linguistics, intelligent computer-assisted language learning, and second language acquisition. He is the author of Computational Methods for Corpus Annotation and Analysis (Springer, 2014). His work appears in American Educational Research Journal, Applied Linguistics, Educational Researcher, English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Testing, ReCALL, TESOL Quarterly, and The Modern Language Journal.