Where Culture and Metaphor Meet: Metaphoric Awareness in Comprehension of Culturally-Specific Idioms

Abstract

The goal of the present study is to investigate whether the comprehension of oligosemic, i.e. culturally-specific (CS) idioms is raised with awareness of underlying conceptual metaphors (CMs) as seems to be the case with idioms motivated by metaphors (CM idioms). An experimental study was conducted involving the metaphor-aware Experimental group and the Control group which was unaware of the existence of CMs. Metaphoric awareness was achieved through brief 15 minute-long lessons on metaphor and underlying motivation. The Control participants were given general information on figurative language in order to ensure equality of input. The instrument containing 35 items was administered to both groups whereas the Experimental group was also provided the underlying CM motivation. An ANOVA test for repeated measures was used to compare CM data to CS data. There was a statistically significant effect of motivation on idiom comprehension, F(1,77)=67.203, p=.000 which suggests that CM idioms are better understood than CS idioms. The t-test results for the CS idioms indicate there is a significant difference between the Control and the Experimental group when it comes to the comprehension of CS idioms in favor of the Experimental participants; it seems the comprehension of CS idioms is raised with metaphoric awareness.