LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 22:1 January 2022
ISSN 1930-2940

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         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
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         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Figurative Idiomatic Competence:
An Analysis of Jordanian Graduate Students of English

Majd Abushunar, Ph.D. in Linguistics

Abstract

This study investigates the figurative idiomatic competence of Jordanian graduate students of English. It mainly focuses on students' strategies and errors when translating English idiomatic expressions into Arabic. The study analyzes the performance of two groups of graduate students in a translation task. The first group includes 18 M.A. students, whereas the second includes 18 Ph.D. students. The findings of the study indicate that Ph.D. students have slightly higher idiomatic competence than M.A. students, though the two groups perform poorly in the translation task. The findings also suggest that graduate students of English often rely on the context, metaphor, and knowledge of L1 to approach the meaning of English fixed figurative expressions. Furthermore, the findings show that paraphrasing and giving an Arabic equivalent are the most common translation strategies applied by graduate students.

Keywords: Error analysis, Translation strategies, Figurative expressions, Idiomatic expressions, Second language acquisition, Jordanian graduate students of English.

1. Introduction

The use of figurative expressions is very much pervasive in English. The English dictionary contains more than 10,000 idiomatic and metaphorical expressions which are used in different life aspects as daily conversations, academic discourses, magazine articles, political discourses, and TV programs (Lems, 2018; McPherron & Randolph, 2014). Figurative expressions exist in different language forms including slang, colloquial, and formal speech (Alkarazoun, 2015; Irujo, 1986). Therefore, it is important for EFL learners to have what is called idiomatic or figurative competence which refers to the ability to produce and understand idiomatic and metaphorical expressions (Buckingham, 2006). Nonetheless, it has been found that acquiring this competence constitutes a challenge for EFL learners (Andreous & Galantomos, 2008; Lems, 2018; Littlemore & Low, 2006). This can be attributed to the special characteristics of figurative expressions: First, they are metaphorical rather than literal. In other words, these expressions mean something more than or something different from the combined meanings of its individual units. For example, birds of a feather means “people of the same sort” (Bataineh & Bataineh, 2002, and Littlemore & Law, 2006). Second, they are invariable or fixed in form. We cannot delete or replace a word in an idiomatic expression, nor can we change the order of its words (Bataineh & Bataineh, 2002). Third, they are culture-specific. Cultures vary in the range and the way they use these idiomatic and metaphorical expressions (Barker, 1992; Lems, 2018).

Because figurative expressions are problematic and difficult to learn, the goal of this research paper is to investigate the figurative competence of students who have achieved a high level of foreign language development. The study mainly attempts to answer the following questions:

1) Are there differences in the figurative competence between Ph.D. and M.A. students?
2) Do all figurative expressions have the same level of difficulty? if yes, why?
3) What kind of errors do graduate students make when translating these expressions into L1?
4) What are the strategies used to give the Arabic meanings of stereotyped figurative expressions?

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Majd Abushunar, Ph.D. in Linguistics
Full-Time Lecturer, Language Centre
The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7810-6089
majd@hu.edu.jo
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