Abstract
The highlight of the current study is that it is the first investigation into analyzing metaphor and metonymy processing for English as a foreign language, EFL, learners. Substantial research has demonstrated neural evidence of left frontal network (e.g., regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus, IFG, middle and superior temporal gyri, MTG and STG) for metaphor processing. Some neuroimaging studies have also pinpointed the correlation between metaphor processing and working memory capacity for, mainly, English native speakers. Adopting event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the present study examined not only metaphor, but also metonymy of different types (systematic and circumstantial) in contrast to the matched literal in order to characterize metaphorical and metonymic neural correlation as well as to explore their interplay with working memory capacity (WMC) and vocabulary size for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Seventeen EFL learners (5 males, 12 females; mean age = 27.11; SD = 4.56) participated in the fMRI experiment. Stimuli consisted of 63 English conversation sets, including one context sentence and one target sentence, created for three conditions: literal, metaphor, and metonymy. Imaging results indicated that circumstantial metonymies involve common regions for figurative language processing (STG and TPL), yet in homologue RH, with lower vocabulary learners. Cuneus was activated as higher span learners resorted to inhibitory control, filtering out irrelevant information. Moreover, in the light of its role in cognitive and behavioral–affective modulation (De Smet, Paquier, Verhoeven, Mariën, 2013), cerebellum may extend its association to figurative language processing. The degree to which bilateral strategies that individuals with larger vocabulary size or higher span resort to or not resort to (neural efficiency) is differently modulated by subtypes of metonymies. Future implication lies in that learners may require perspective-taking ability and semantic reasoning for imagery mental network.