The Role of Context in Understanding Colloquial Arabic Idiomatic Expressions by Jordanian Children

1 Introduction

The idiomatic expression is defined by Cooper (1999, p. 233) as “an expression whose meaning cannot always be readily derived from the individual meaning of its constituent elements.” They are relatively fixed structures. Some of these idioms are syntactically rigid; i.e. they lose their meaning when they are formed in a different way as in the passive, whereas others are less rigid and allow some change in their structure or a substitution of their lexical items (Cooper, 1999).

Idiomatic expressions in Arabic were investigated by many Arab writers and researchers. Many of these idiomatic expressions are classified into two different patterns. For example, an idiomatic expression may be in the form of a full sentence where the meaning of its strings is different from the result of their combination such as the blood reached his head (i.e. he became angry). Other Arabic idioms could be in the form of one word like قطاعة qataʿah (A cutter: someone who is very intelligent). Thus, semantic and syntactic characteristics of Arabic idiomatic expressions are similar to those of English idioms (Awwad, 1990).

Researchers have long focused on how idioms are understood and processed by adults as well as by children. They argued that, since understanding idiomatic expressions causes a problem for adults, the degree of difficulty for children will be much more. Levorato and Cacciari (1992, p. 416) explained that this difficulty refers to the little linguistic experience that children have compared to adults. They argued that the figurative competence needs a set of abilities such as understanding “the dominant, peripheral and additional meanings of a word, its position in a given semantic domain as well as its paradigmatic and Syntagmatic relations.” Moreover, among these abilities, when given in a context, children must be able to use contextual information, establish and integrate the lexical and semantic information to extract the suitable meaning of a figurative expression” (Levorato and Cacciari (1992, p. 416)).

Studies on understanding and producing idiomatic expressions identified three factors that help in understanding idioms. Some of these studies focused on the semantic analyzability of the constituents of the idiom (e.g. Cain et al., 2009; Gibbs, 1987; Levorato & Cacciari, 1999, among others). Levorato and Cacciari (1992) identified another factor that could help in understanding idioms. They showed that the familiarity of the idiomatic expression can influence the ease with which an idiom is understood. Thus, people can understand some idiomatic expressions easily because they are familiar with them since they have an exposure to them before. The role of familiarity was emphasized by Nippold and Taylor (2002). They argued that exposure plays a significant role in the comprehension of idiomatic expressions. Thus, the more exposed to an idiomatic expression, the more able she/he to extract its figurative meaning. This hypothesis is known as Acquisition via Exposure Hypothesis. They also explained that idioms undergo extensive periods of acquisition through adolescence and beyond. This suggests that adults will not face problems in understanding idiomatic expressions, whereas children, as not exposed to most of the idiomatic expressions in their language, will face difficulties in understanding them especially when facing them without context.

According to Levorato and Cacciari (1992), whenever a child is exposed to an idiomatic expression that s/he is unfamiliar with in a context, s/he can use the information in the text to derive the suitable meaning of the idiom. Thus, even unfamiliar idiomatic expressions can be understood if they are introduced in an informative and supporting context. This is called the Global Elaboration Model (GEM) proposed by Levorato and Cacciari (1995). It states that a well-formed context can enable the reader to appreciate that the transparent meaning of an idiom is inappropriate, and further provides the necessary semantic information to derive the appropriate opaque meaning.

There is a strong tie between understanding Arabic idioms and realizing the Arab culture and customs, Alghazo et al. (2022) stated that that idioms in JA convey a hidden meaning that couldn’t be understood without understanding and realizing the linguistic and non-linguistic context.

2 Literature Review

The relationship between age and figurative comprehension of idiomatic expressions was intensively investigated by researchers. Most of these studies showed that children’s ability in comprehending idiomatic expressions arose between 7- and 12-years-olds (Cain et al., 2009; Levorato & Cacciari, 1992, etc.). Levorato and Cacciari (1995) argued that older children were more able to understand idiomatic expressions than their younger counterparts. They explained that the reason that underlies the better performance of the older children is their advanced linguistic abilities. Thus, the older children were more able to integrate the different types of information in the text to derive the appropriate meaning of the idiomatic expression. Another reason for their performance is that they have had more exposure to these expressions, and therefore, the expressions were more lexicalized and were more understood by them.

This result was also revealed by Oakhill et al. (2016) who were interested in the impact of age on the understanding of idiomatic expressions. They concluded that younger children were less able to choose the appropriate interpretation of the idiomatic expression.

The role of context was another factor that has been examined by a wide range of studies on figurative language. Within these studies, the reading comprehension level of the participants was taken into consideration since good comprehenders are thought to be more able to use context to derive the suitable opaque meaning of idiomatic expressions than their poor counterparts.

Cain et al. (2005) found that skilled comprehenders were more able to explain the meaning of both familiar (English) and unfamiliar (novel/translations of European) idioms when presented in context. They also revealed that both familiar and unfamiliar idioms were better understood when presented in informative contexts than when presented in isolation. Also, Oakhill et al. (2016) supported these results and emphasized the role of context in comprehending idiomatic expressions mainly by good comprehenders.

Most of the studies that tended to emphasize the role of context in understanding figurative language in general, and idiomatic expressions in particular, used novel idioms that are not found in the participants’ native language. Thus, they control the familiarity condition by including idioms that the participants have never been exposed to and they are not familiar with. An example of these studies is the one conducted by Oakhill et al. (2016). Within this study, the researchers included idioms that were translated from Italy. Doing so, the results of the study could be interpreted by the GEM but not by the Acquisition via Exposure hypothesis. The researchers reported that the results of their study cannot be explained by familiarity since if exposure played a significant role in the comprehension process for the idioms in this study, the interaction between familiarity and meaning condition should have resulted in more correct answers for English idioms in context but this was not the pattern found.

The suitable meaning of an idiomatic expression for the context where it is presented can be in two types: the transparent meaning and the opaque meaning. The difficulty appears most with deriving the opaque meaning. With the transparent meaning, the difficulty decreases. This is because the meaning of an expression is immediately derived from the meaning of its constituents. This was found in most of the studies that examined the performance of children in a context that needs the transparent meaning of the idiomatic expression compared to those where the transparent meaning is not suitable for the whole meaning of the context. Again, Oakhill et al. (2016) found that good and poor comprehenders in all age groups in their study scored more in the transparent meaning condition and spent more time reading the stories where opaque meaning is needed.

While the role of context in understanding idiomatic expressions by school children has been widely investigated in English-speaking children, it has not been examined in Jordanian children. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the relevant literature on how different variables affect Jordanian school children’s understanding of Arabic idiomatic expressions in context. In particular, this study seeks to test the predictions made by the researcher based on the findings of previous studies. First, it is predicted that the number of correct answers will be given more in the transparent meaning condition than in the opaque meaning condition. In line with what has been found in previous studies, it is assumed that good comprehenders will give a higher number of correct answers than their poor counterparts, especially in the opaque meaning condition of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. On the basis of familiarity, children will give more correct answers for familiar rather than unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. Finally, it is predicted that older children will outperform younger ones.

3 Methodology

4 Results

5 Discussion of Results

As mentioned earlier, ANOVA and paired comparisons were used to analyze the results of good and poor comprehenders within two age groups in their interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar idiomatic expressions introduced in two types of contexts requiring the transparent or the opaque meaning of the idiomatic expression. These types of statistical analysis were carried out in order to prove the hypotheses set up by the researcher.

The first hypothesis was successfully met; children in this study gave more correct answers in the transparent meaning condition than in the opaque meaning condition. This was also revealed by the ANOVA analysis which showed that the meaning condition has a main effect on the correct answers given by good and poor comprehenders in the two age groups. Paired comparisons revealed this finding and showed that even if the idiomatic expression is familiar, children sometimes tended to interpret it literally. Not only poor comprehenders, good comprehenders also tended to give more correct answers in the transparent meaning condition. The reason behind this finding is that the transparent meaning of an expression does not need any processing mechanisms or inferential skills as is the case with opaque meaning. When the expression is idiomatic, children need to use the different semantic components in the context in order to derive a suitable meaning. This finding goes in line with other studies that emphasized the ease of interpreting the idiomatic expression when the transparent meaning is needed. Oakhill et al. (2016) found that children almost interpreted idiomatic expressions when transparent is suitable for the context easily and thus they gave more correct answers in the literal meaning condition than in the figurative one even when the idiom is a novel one.

The second hypothesis was also proved by the statistical analysis of the correct answers given by good and poor comprehenders in the two age groups: good comprehenders gave more correct answers than poor comprehenders. This tendency was apparent in the opaque meaning condition of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions where good comprehenders outperformed their poor counterparts. Since children have no exposure to new unfamiliar expressions, poor comprehenders were not able to identify that a literal interpretation is not correct, and even if they recognized this, they were not able to connect the different sources of semantic information available in the context to come up with the suitable opaque meaning. However, good comprehenders were able to use the context to derive a suitable meaning even when the expression was unfamiliar. Thus, this finding emphasizes the role of context in interpreting idiomatic expressions.

This result can be explained on the basis of the GEM proposed by Levorato and Cacciari (1995, 1999) which emphasizes the role of context in identifying that a transparent meaning of an idiomatic expression is not appropriate and use the semantic components of this context to infer the opaque meaning. The reason behind using this model to explain this finding is that the opaque meaning of unfamiliar expressions was understood as well as the opaque meaning of familiar ones by good comprehenders.

This finding shows the same tendency of poor and good comprehenders in previous studies which investigated the role of context in the interpretation of idioms (e.g. Ackerman, 1982; Levorato & Cacciari, 1999; Oakhill et al., 2016, among others). These studies showed the importance of context in understanding idioms by comparing the results of skilled and less-skilled comprehenders (Nesi et al., 2006). In these studies, as the case in this study, skilled comprehenders outperformed their less-skilled counterparts in interpreting idiomatic expressions when they are presented in context.

Familiarity was also found to have a main effect on the correct answers given by good and poor comprehenders. Thus, the third hypothesis proposed by the researcher was also proven by the statistical analysis of the children’s results: more correct answers were provided for familiar rather than unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. Children within the two age groups gave more correct answers for familiar than unfamiliar expressions. Even in the opaque meaning condition, poor comprehenders were able to give correct answers for the familiar expressions just as their good comprehenders counterparts. For unfamiliar idiomatic expressions, their performance was not as their performance for familiar ones.

This finding can be explained on the basis of the Acquisition via Exposure Hypothesis proposed by Nippold and Martin (1989) since poor children were able to interpret the opaque meaning of familiar idiomatic expressions because of their knowledge of these expressions and not as a result of their reading comprehension skills.

This finding was also revealed by other studies that emphasized the role of familiarity in interpreting idiomatic expressions (Laval, 2003; Levorato & Cacciari, 1992; Nippold & Rudzinski, 1993, among others). Children in the study conducted by Oakhill et al. (2016) showed a different tendency. Within this study, children did not give more correct answers for English idioms in the opaque meaning condition, and hence their findings cannot be explained by familiarity.

The fourth hypothesis was not successfully met by the results of children since age did not have a main effect as other variables on the performance of children in this study. Older children did not give more correct answers than younger children. The only effect of age appears with older good children who outperformed younger good children in the opaque meaning condition of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. This variable did not exhibit the same degree of effect that was found in previous studies (Cain et al., 2005; Levorato et al., 2004; Oakhill et al., 2016). These studies found that older children outperformed younger children in their interpretation of idiomatic expressions.

One reason behind the difference in the effect of age in this study and the previous studies is that the age groups in this study are older than those in the previous ones or that the difference in age between the groups of this study is not significant. Most of these studies examined the interpretation of idiomatic expressions in children with the age of 7-year-olds to 12-year-olds and this allowed them to identify age differences (Cain et al., 2005). Another reason behind the little effect of age in this study could be interpreted on the basis of differences in comprehension skills between old and young children. Levorato and Cacciari (1995) explained that younger children did not make use of context to derive the opaque meaning of idiomatic expressions as did older children because their comprehension skills are not as those of older children. Thus, the differences between the age groups in previous studies relate to the advanced reading comprehension skills and not to age in particular.

In conclusion, some of the results revealed in this study go in line with other previous studies and contradict the results of others. The only difference between this study and other previous studies is that age which has a main effect in other studies on children’s performance was not found to have a main effect in this study. Meaning condition, reading comprehension skills of children, and the familiarity of the idiomatic expressions seemed to have main effects on children’s performance. Also, the differences in the results of good and poor comprehenders emphasize the role of context in interpreting idiomatic expressions.

6 Conclusion

The aim of the present study was to examine the role of context in interpreting familiar and unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. The role of context was investigated by examining the performance of good and poor comprehenders and how they can use the semantic components provided by the context where the idiomatic expression is presented in order to help them deriving the intended meaning, i.e. transparent or opaque. To do so, eighty school children were recruited from a public school in Al-Bouaida, a rural area north of Jordan. These children were divided into two age groups: 40 10-year-olds who are fourth graders and 40 12-year-olds who are sixth graders. Each group was then divided into two sub-groups based on children’s level of comprehension. Thus, each group was divided into 20 good and 20 poor comprehenders.

Ten familiar and 10 unfamiliar idiomatic expressions were put in two types of stories. Thus, each child is presented with 20 stories where the transparent meaning is appropriate and 20 stories where the opaque meaning is needed. The effects of four variables on the number of correct answers given by children are age, meaning condition, familiarity, and level of comprehension.

The statistical analysis showed that three variables have main effects on children’s understanding of idiomatic expressions, these are: meaning condition, level of comprehension, and familiarity. This finding lends support to those of Laval (2003), Levorato and Cacciari (1999), and Nippold and Martin (1989). Age was the only variable that was found not to have a main effect on children’s performance. This finding contradicts what has been found in previous studies such as Oakhill et al. (2016). The findings of the study can be summarized below:

1. The meaning condition has a main effect on the number of correct answers given by children. Good and poor comprehenders in the two age groups gave more correct answers in the transparent meaning condition. This refers to the ease of understanding the literal meaning of an expression. For instance, when children were presented with a story where the transparent meaning of the idiomatic expression ʿid lalʿashra (count to ten) is needed, they were able to choose the picture that represents the transparent meaning of the expression more often than when its opaque meaning is needed.

2. Children’s level of comprehension also affected their performance. Good comprehenders gave more correct answers, especially in the opaque meaning condition of unfamiliar idioms, than their poor counterparts. Good comprehenders could make use of the context and its semantic components to appreciate that the transparent meaning of an idiom is not appropriate and to derive the appropriate meaning. Poor comprehenders, on the other hand, failed to appreciate that a transparent meaning of an idiom does not fit with the context, and even if they appreciate this, their low level of reading comprehension skills does not enable them to derive the appropriate meaning.

3. Familiarity seemed to have an impact on children’s interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Children gave more correct answers in the opaque meaning condition for familiar idiomatic expressions than for unfamiliar ones. Even poor comprehenders in the two age groups were able to appreciate that the literal meaning of an idiom is not appropriate, and they were able to choose the correct interpretation of familiar idioms. This cannot be considered a result of their comprehension skills since they must give the same number of correct answers for unfamiliar ones. The reason behind their good performance here is a result of their good knowledge of these idiomatic expressions as they had good exposure to them.

4. Age was not found to have a main effect on children’s performance in this study. Older children did not outperform their younger counterparts. The only case where age seemed to affect children’s performance is with older good comprehenders in the opaque meaning condition of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions. Here, age had an interaction with the level of comprehension skills.

5. The reason behind the little effect of age on children’s performance in this study could be a result of the little age difference between the two age groups. Thus, both age groups have a similar degree of exposure to the targeted idiomatic expressions which resulted in their similar numbers of correct answers in the opaque meaning condition of familiar idioms. Another reason for this limit in the effect of age could be explained on the basis of differences in comprehension skills. Thus, if older children outperform younger ones, this may not be a result of the difference in age between them but a difference in the comprehension skills that are improved as children get older since they get more experienced with language interpretation and language use. What proves this explanation is the results of older and younger poor comprehenders. Older poor children did not outperform their younger counterparts. If age matters, the opposite should be the case. The comprehension skills of older poor comprehenders did not improve as they got older and hence their performances were similar.

6. The performance of good and poor comprehenders shows the role of context in the interpretation of idiomatic expressions even when they are unfamiliar.

The present study investigated the use of context in interpreting familiar and unfamiliar idiomatic expressions in two age groups: 10- and 12-year-olds. In this regard, it would be interesting for future research to investigate this in younger age groups. For instance, future research could examine more potential differences in the transparent and opaque meaning conditions for familiar and unfamiliar expressions by groups that differ significantly in age. This would be the case since comprehending idiomatic expressions arises between 7- and 12-year-olds (Cain et al., 2009; Levorato & Cacciari, 1992). Younger age groups could also be taken into consideration, for example, it is possible for future studies to examine if 5-year-old children have the ability to interpret familiar idiomatic expressions when they are presented in short pictured stories.

Further studies can also examine the effect of other variables such as gender on interpreting idiomatic expressions. This could be the case since previous linguistic and neurological studies showed linguistic differences between males and females and emphasized the linguistic superiority of females to males (Burman et al., 2008). It is also recommended that comparative studies with other Arabic countries could be conducted.