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A double-edged sword: Metaphor and metonymy through pictures for learning idioms

  • Kris Ramonda ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 18, 2019

Abstract

This study examined the impact that metaphorical pictures and semantic transparency had on meaning recall of English idioms for L2 learners. Twenty-seven idioms of differing semantic transparency (low, mid, and high) were selected and two types of pictures were drawn for each idiom. One picture type was a literal only representation while the other was a literal+figurative representation. These idioms and picture conditions (no picture, literal only, and literal+figurative) were counterbalanced and presented to student participants (n=64) via a PowerPoint input treatment. The delayed posttests measured meaning recall of the idioms’ L1 paraphrased meaning. The data showed that in absolute terms, literal-figurative pictures promoted better retention of meaning at all levels of transparency, but this finding was most robust for high-transparency idioms. However, a number of pictures, especially those with metonymical elements, led to overspecification, which has wider implications for pictorial input in general.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jeannette Littlemore, who gave me invaluable advice in the preparation and design of this study, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions of this article. I am also grateful to Yu Tamura for introducing me to generalized linear mixed-effects models and for being such a tremendous help in applying them to my data.

Appendix 1 Treatment Pictures

High-Transparency Idioms

Mid-Transparency Idioms

Low-Transparency Idioms

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2018-0336).


Published Online: 2019-07-18
Published in Print: 2022-09-27

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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