Adding more fuel to the fire: an eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speaker

Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna; Conklin, Kathy; Schmitt, Norbert

Abstract

Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively (at the end of the day – ‘eventually’), literally (at the end of the day – ‘in the evening’), and novel phrases (at the end of the war). Native speaker results indicate a processing advantage for idioms over novel phrases, as evidenced by fewer and shorter fixations. Further, no processing advantage is found for figurative idiom uses over literal ones in a full idiom analysis or in a recognition point analysis. Contrary to native speaker results, non-native findings suggest that L2 speakers process idioms at a similar speed to novel phrases. Further, figurative uses are processed more slowly than literal ones. Importantly, the recognition point analysis allows us to establish where non-natives slow down when processing the figurative meaning.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: May 26, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: May 26, 2015
• Journal: Second Language Research
• Print ISSN: 0267-6583
• Electronic ISSN: 0267-6583
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658310382068
• Keywords: language comprehension, figurative and literal language, mental lexicon, disambiguating context, recognition point
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1010127
• Publisher URL: http://slr.sagepub.com/content/27/2/251