Cultural and individual differences in comprehension of sports metaphors

Abstract

This paper attempts to find out the effect of controlled input and rate of retention of sports metaphors by Bengali speakers of English over a period of 4 weeks. Metaphors are non-literal expressions that contain culture-specific information that does not correspond with what they state (Cooper, 1998). It has been a constant site of struggle for L2 speakers of English to understand metaphors that readily mean something for a native speaker of English. A metaphor brings up an image in the native speaker’s mind but even an imagable idiom some time fails to conjure up images in the L2 speaker’s mind. (Boers and Deemecheleer, 2001). To address this question, a four-week long research is conducted in order to find out the acquisition and retention of 10 sports metaphors from the specific domains of Baseball and American Football. To conduct the study, The Boers (2004) model have been followed. That is: i) by making the figurative language literal ii) by employing learners’ problem-solving skills for retention of the metaphors, and iii) grouping idioms under a broad metaphoric theme for clearer understanding. The results show that controlled and repeated input along with factors like motivation and frequency have instigated into acquisition and retention of the sports metaphors by the participants.  It also shows that metaphor acquisition is a socio-cognitive process where a learner learns in the context by analyzing contextual clues and by exchanging between several mental domains.&nbsp