【Article by  EMI Resource Center】

On Friday, February 21, 2025, the EMI Resource Center at National Chengchi University (NCCU), in collaboration with the Linguistic Society of Taiwan, hosted a thought-provoking academic lecture in Conference Room 5 on the 7th floor of the Administration Building at NCCU.

Titled “Planting Seeds or Going to Battle? Metaphor and Gender in Business Discourse,” the event featured Professor Kathleen Ahrens from the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as the keynote speaker. The session was moderated by Professor Siaw-Fong Chung, Director of the NCCU EMI Resource Center and President of the Linguistic Society of Taiwan. Additionally, Associate Professor Ren-Feng Duann from the General Education Center at National Taitung University and Assistant Professor Yao-Ying Lai from the Graduate Institute of Linguistics at NCCU participated as discussants.

Professor Siaw-Fong Chung delivered the opening speech before Professor Kathleen Ahrens presented her research on how language shapes perceptions of gender and power. The speaker’s work focused on conceptual metaphors in business and political discourse and her research analyzed how the "war" (WAR) and "planting" (PLANT) metaphorical frameworks function in gendered communication. She highlighted challenges faced by women in leadership, such as the "glass ceiling" and the "glass cliff," demonstrating how these metaphorical structures influence views on career advancement and leadership roles.Using ontological frameworks and collocational analysis, she explored how metaphors reinforce gender stereotypes and proposed alternative linguistic models to illustrate gender equality in leadership. She also analyzed Hillary Clinton’s rhetorical strategies and illustrated how female leaders navigate traditional gender expectations through metaphor use.

Associate Professor Ren-Feng Duann explored “Metaphors and Translations of ‘校正回歸,’”which analyzed its impact on public perception during Taiwan’s COVID-19 pandemic. She analyzed how this term was translated as "backlog" and "retrospective adjustment" and examined how it was interpreted across different languages and cultural contexts. She also explained how its ambiguity, along with media portrayals, contributed to public misunderstandings, criticism, and skepticism.Through corpus analysis, she investigated how the term evolved in news reports and social media discussions which emphasized the role of language in political and social communication.

Assistant Professor Yao-Ying Lai presented her research on “Hidden Meaning in Sentences: Conceptual Representations and Real-time Processing.” Her work, grounded in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics, investigated how people process semantic ambiguity in real time. Using fMRI studies, she examined how the brain resolves complement coercion and aspectual coercion, which demonstrates how language comprehension involves immediate adjustments based on prior knowledge, contextual cues, and semantic expectations. Her findings offered critical insights into both human cognition and the development of AI-driven natural language processing.

The event brought together faculty and researchers from NCCU and other academic institutions and sparked lively discussions on how language both reflects and shapes gender, power, and societal structures. Through this interdisciplinary exchange, attendees gained fresh perspectives from linguistics, translation studies, and cognitive science, re-evaluating the profound influence of language on gender issues.

The NCCU EMI Resource Center remains committed to hosting international scholar lectures, fostering academic exchange, and providing faculty and students with opportunities to engage with cutting-edge research. Follow us for more updates!

More Information
Website：https://www.eminccu.com/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/nccu.emi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nccu.emi