خلاصة:
The goal of this study was to investigate the kinds of discourse goals that Iranian EFL learners perceive as the most probable reasons behind the utterance of figurative language, metaphors and similes, with reference to 4 independent variables of Figure Type (Metaphor or Simile), Tenor Concreteness (Concrete or Abstract), Context (List Format or Story), and Modality (Oral, Written, and Both). The participants were presented with 16 sentences, featuring both metaphors and similes, and they were asked to mark as many 12 discourse goals as possible they believed to be the reasons for their production. The results indicated that most of the participants leaned towards the choice of Compare Similarities for the similes as the best candidate for describing the intention of the writer or the speaker, signifying the effect of the independent variable Figure Type. The factor of Context influenced the choice of the discourse goals Provoke Thought, Get Attention, Clarify, and Contrast Differences, while the factor of Modality affected only Add Emphasis. Also, 3 goals of Add Interest, Clarify, and Show Positive Emotion turned out to have significant interaction with Tenor Concreteness.
ملخص الجهاز:
com Shahrekord University, Iran Abstract The goal of this study was to investigate the kinds of discourse goals that Iranian EFL learners perceive as the most probable reasons behind the utterance of figurative language, metaphors and similes, with reference to 4 independent variables of Figure Type (Metaphor or Simile), Tenor Concreteness (Concrete or Abstract), Context (List Format or Story), and Modality (Oral, Written, and Both).
The participants were presented with 16 sentences, featuring both metaphors and similes, and they were asked to mark as many 12 discourse goals as possible they believed to be the reasons for their production.
Just read, for example, some few lines of a written discourse or a news item, and discover the metaphorical uses of language in abundance (Eerdmans & Di Candia, 2007; Kövecses, 2002).
Like Jones and Estes (2005), the researchers divided their study into three experiments: In Experiment 1, they primed their subjects with a list of 16 sentences, containing both metaphors and similes, and their subsequent discourse goals, and told them to check those goals they considered to be relevant to the production of the specific figurative sentence.
Despite such a great amount of importance attached to this figurative language use, evident in the enormous amount of research done in the area of L1 and L2, one can find almost no cases, to the best of the present researcher’s knowledge, of research studies aimed at any systematic investigation of the discourse goals attributed to a speaker’s metaphorical utterance on the part of L2 learners.