English has taken on a new level of importance due to its international nature, which logically leads to the acceptance that English should be taught around the world. While language learning theory has generally accepted the axiom that language learners with higher levels of motivation will be higher achievers, an important task remains: finding what constitutes motivation for language learners in various cultural settings. Past research has focused on identifying surface constructs that Chinese people living in Taiwan associate with English. This study explores underlying constructs in an attempt to gain a fuller understanding of the perceptions Chinese people in Taiwan have towards English, to discover how these may assist EFL teachers in motivating their students to learn English. A grounded theory approach employed ethnographic data collection along with deep interviews (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) to elicit psychological constructs. ZMET is a valid, deep interview technique designed to elicit psychological constructs through a multi-stage process which requires respondents to make use of all five senses. Theoretical sampling was employed to assist in building the grounded theory regarding these perceptions towards English. Data analyzed with XSight were investigated for prevalent constructs. Three central categories were elicited: communication, achievement and mobility. References to communication were most prevalent and to mobility least, yet in terms of psychological depth mobility emerged as deep while communication appeared shallow. The relevance of these categories to the recently proposed Chinese Imperative (Chen, Warden & Chang; 2005) was investigated to assist in making this motivator actionable for the EFL situation in Taiwan.