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A cross-cultural perspective on the comprehension of novel and conventional idiomatic expressions

  • Svetlana Yu. Pavlina

    Svetlana Yu. Pavlina is Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. She has held teaching and research positions at the Linguistics university of Nizhny Novgorod. Dr. Pavlina is author and co-author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in English and Russian centered on discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication, political linguistics, language, culture, and communication studies, multimodal linguistics and phraseology.

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Published/Copyright: February 23, 2024
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Abstract

This paper examines factors that affect the comprehension of novel and conventional idiomatic expressions by second language students of English. Using the Conventional Figurative Language Theory (CFLT), the study explores how the understanding of novel and conventional idioms differs and how it is affected by context. I find that novel idioms tend to be easier to comprehend than conventional idioms and interpret this effect through the role of digital media in the creation and dissemination of new phraseological coinages. However, I also observe that while the understanding of conventional idioms is enhanced by context, the role of context in the comprehension of novel idioms is not pronounced. I conclude by discussing the strategies that facilitate the comprehension of both novel and conventional idioms such as the analysis of mental imagery associated with their literal meanings, reliance on background knowledge, and attention to the motivation of an idiomatic expression.


Corresponding author: Svetlana Yu. Pavlina, Department of Foreign Languages, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation, E-mail:

About the author

Svetlana Yu. Pavlina

Svetlana Yu. Pavlina is Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation. She has held teaching and research positions at the Linguistics university of Nizhny Novgorod. Dr. Pavlina is author and co-author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in English and Russian centered on discourse analysis, cross-cultural communication, political linguistics, language, culture, and communication studies, multimodal linguistics and phraseology.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and recommendations. I am also grateful to the participants of my experiment. I would like to thank Dr. Eugenia Gorina for her immensely helpful suggestions at the stage of manuscript revision.

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Received: 2022-10-10
Accepted: 2023-01-02
Published Online: 2024-02-23
Published in Print: 2024-03-25

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