The (re)activation of idiomatic expressions (La (re)activación de expresiones idiomáticas)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Two experiments examined meaning (re)activation of English idiomatic expressions by Spanish-dominant, English-dominant and balanced bilinguals. Participants listened to idiomatic expressions of the type I always 3*miss the boat1 * when it comes to jokes, and that2 * makes it nearly4 * impossible to attend comedy shows, and made lexical decisions to visually presented targets that were related literally (water), figuratively (fail) or unrelated to the critical idiomatic expression. In Experiment 1, we measured meaning activation immediately at idiom offset (probe 1*) and after an anaphoric referential description (e.g., that; probe 2*). Probe 2 was intended to further examine whether an anaphoric referential description was more likely to (re)activate its antecedent figurative interpretation that could be more pragmatically plausible than its literal representation. In Experiment 2, targets were presented at idiom onset and 300 ms after anaphor offset. Results revealed that idiom meaning (re)activation was modulated by language dominance, where English-dominant and balanced bilinguals had faster and more accurate responses than Spanish-dominant bilinguals.