Language Teaching Research

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Language Teaching Research 11,1 (2007); pp. 43–62 Presenting figurative idioms with a touch of etymology: more than mere mnemonics? Frank Boers University of Antwerp, Belgium, June Eyckmans Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Belgium, and Hélène Stengers Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Instead of being completely arbitrary, the meaning of many idioms is ‘motivated’ by their original, literal usage. In an FLT context, this offers the possibility of presenting idioms in ways that promote insightful learning rather than ‘blind’ memorization. Associating an idiom with its etymology has been shown to enhance retention. This effect seems in accordance with Dual Coding theory, as the etymological association is likely to call up a mental image of a concrete scene which can be stored in memory alongside the verbal form. The present study explores the possibility of taking this technique beyond ‘mere’ mnemonics. We report a series of experiments that were set up with the participation of students of English in higher education. The results show that knowledge of the origin of idioms can effectively help learners comprehend their figurative meaning. Not only does the problem-solving task of inferring idiomatic meaning on the basis of etymological information appear feasible, it seems to facilitate recall, too, as predicted by Levels-of-processing theory in general. Finally, the results suggest that knowledge of the origin of certain idioms can help learners estimate whether they might be typical of informal discourse. I Introduction: motivated idiomatic meaning What is referred to in the literature as ‘idioms’ makes up a large and heterogeneous class of (semi-)fixed multiword expressions (Grant and Bauer, 2004). Traditionally, one of the principal criteria for classifying an expression as idiomatic has been its non-compositional nature (e.g. Fernando and Flavell, 1981). If an expression is said to be non-compositional, it is believed that its meaning cannot be inferred by simply adding up the semantics of its constituents. As a result, the meaning of idioms appears to be quite arbitrary. Because of this alleged arbitrary nature of the semantics of idioms, it has long been taken for granted in second or foreign language teaching that, because of the absence of reliable clues inside the expressions themselves, learners could only resort to contextual clues to try to interpret idioms (e.g. Cooper, Address for correspondence: Frank Boers, Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Departement Toegepaste Taalkunde, Trierstraat 84, 1040 Brussel, Belgium; e-mail: Frank.Boers@docent.ehb.be © 2007 SAGE Publications 10.1177/1362168806072460 Downloaded from http://ltr.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on August 19, 2009
44 Presenting figurative idioms with a touch of etymology 1999), and the only way learners could memorize such expressions was believed to be rote-learning. In recent years, however, cognitive semantic studies of figurative language (e.g. Gibbs, 1994; Kövecses, 1990; Lakoff, 1987) have shown that considerable numbers of idioms are not completely arbitrary. Instead, figurative idioms are now believed to be motivated. This means that, while it is true that their figurative, idiomatic meaning is not fully predictable on the basis of a literal reading, the derivation from that literal sense can nonetheless be ‘explained’. Figurative idioms can be motivated along various lines. Many have been shown to instantiate general conceptual metaphors or conceptual metonymies. For example, the expression Time flies can be motivated by the conceptual metaphor TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT (also evidenced by statements such as I’m falling behind schedule again, The holidays are approaching and Those days are over). The expression Lend a (helping)hand can be motivated by a conceptual metonymy where the hand stands for the action (also evidenced by idioms such as Get one’s hand in, Turn one’s hand to something and Hands-on experience). Of special interest to us in this article, however, is a class of figurative idioms that are derived from associations in rather specific experiential domains, and that can be motivated by reference to their literal usage in those original contexts. For example, the idiomatic meaning Be waiting in the wings can be motivated with reference to its original, literal counterpart in the theatre (i.e. actors waiting in the wings of the theatre before making their appearance on the stage). Such idioms also instantiate more general conceptual metaphors or metonymies, but their specific source domains add richer imagery to them. For example, A race against time reflects the TIME IS A MOVING OBJECT metaphor, but adds the imagery of a racing contest. A safe pair of hands illustrates the hand-for-the-action metonymy, but adds sporting imagery (at least for those who are aware that this expression is derived from ball games, especially cricket). It now turns out that only a very small minority of the entries in idiom dictionaries are both non-compositional and non-figurative and thus especially hard for learners to process in any insightful way (Grant, 2004). It follows that, contrary to traditional beliefs in second and foreign language learning, the majority of idiomatic expressions could possibly be presented to learners in ways that go beyond ‘blind’ rote-learning after all. The beneficial mnemonic effect of presenting idioms to students as semantically motivated has already been revealed by the results of a series of controlled experiments. For example, retention has been shown to be facilitated by raising learners’ awareness of the conceptual metaphors or conceptual metonymies behind clusters of figurative expressions (e.g. Boers, 2000a; Kövecses and Szabó, 1996). Students have also been shown to be more likely to remember figurative idioms derived from specific source domains when they are associated with the original, literal usage (e.g. Boers, 2001). We have started calling this mnemonic technique etymological elaboration (Boers et al., Downloaded from http://ltr.sagepub.com at Shanghai Jiaotong University on August 19, 2009
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