The tug of war between an idiom's figurative and literal meanings: Evidence from native and bilingual speakers

Wendy Van Ginkel,Ton Dijkstra

doi:10.1017/s1366728918001219

Wendy Van Ginkel, Ton Dijkstra

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/s1366728918001219

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Abstract

AbstractIn two lexical-decision experiments, we investigated the processing of figurative and literal meaning in idioms. Dutch native and German–Dutch bilingual speakers responded to target words presented after a minimal context idiom prime (e.g., ‘He kicked the bucket’). Target words were related to the figurative meaning of the prime (‘die’), the literal word at the end of the idiom (‘water’), or unrelated to both (‘face’). We observed facilitation in RTs for figuratively and literally related targets relative to unrelated targets for both participant groups. A higher frequency idiom-final word caused inhibition in responses to the literally related target for native speakers, indicating competition between the idiom as a whole and its literal word constituents. Native speakers further showed sensitivity to transparency of the idiom's meaning and the plausibility of the idiom as a literally interpretable sentence. The results are interpreted in terms of available L1/L2 idiom comprehension models, and a more detailed processing account for literal and idiomatic sentence interpretation.

Highlights

The presence of idioms in language often leads to advantages in processing speed over purely literal language for native language (L1) speakers (Gibbs, 1980; Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds & Antos, 1978; Swinney & Cutler, 1979)
One item was excluded for more than 20% data loss (‘KAAK’ / ‘JAW’), and one further target was removed for overall slow outlier reaction time (RT) at 2.5 SDs from the overall mean (‘INGEWANDEN’ / ‘INTESTINES’)
Paired t-tests showed that target word length and target word frequency remained balanced after these three items were removed

Summary

Introduction

The presence of idioms in language often leads to advantages in processing speed over purely literal language for native language (L1) speakers (Gibbs, 1980; Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds & Antos, 1978; Swinney & Cutler, 1979). This finding is commonly referred to as the IDIOM SUPERIORITY EFFECT. A semantic analysis of the words in the idiomatic expression to kick the bucket could result in a literal interpretation instead of the idiom’s meaning to die. Idioms themselves differ in transparency: the meaning of some idioms is directly derived from their component parts (i.e., to miss the boat means to miss out on an opportunity), whereas that of other idioms such as kick the bucket (to die) is more opaque

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