Assessing how bilingualism affects and influences idiomatic processing
Open Access
- Author:
- Pelella, Maggie Rose
- Area of Honors:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Paola Eulalia Dussias, Thesis Supervisor
John Lipski, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- bilingualism
idioms
idiomatic processing
psycholinguistics
cross modal priming - Abstract:
- Figurative language embodies the use of expressions that convey a message outside of what the individual words mean, and is widely used in daily discourse. Therefore, attaining figurative competence by improving the learning of multi-word expressions is a critical component to second language acquisition. Specifically, in this study, the bilingual processing of idiomatic expressions is examined. The research is centered around the idea that bilinguals may use their native language (L1) to aid idiomatic processing in their second language (L2). The study investigates how congruency of idioms influences processing. A congruent idiom is defined as an idiom that not only conveys the same meaning between two languages, but also uses the same words to do so in each language. An incongruent idiom is an expression in which the meaning is the same across the two languages, however the words used to express that meaning are not equivalents across languages. Additionally, the time points of literal and figurative activation were observed by manipulating the Interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and target in a Cross Modal Priming Task. 26 Spanish-English late bilinguals at the Universidad de Granada in Granada, Spain participated in the study. They were presented with a prime (English idioms) and prompted to make a lexical decision on the target word that appeared at an ISI of either 300ms or 600ms following the presentation of the prime. It was hypothesized that congruent idioms would facilitate bilingual processing, while incongruent idioms would pose a greater challenge to language learners. Overall, the data show that congruency does in fact facilitate bilingual idiomatic processing by providing a “boost” that triggers the activation of both the literal and figurative meanings at 600ms ISI. For incongruent idioms, without this “boost,” only the literal meaning was activated at 600ms ISI. In addition, the data show that participants relied on their L1 while processing an idiom in their L2.