Bilingual idiom processing: opening up a can of worms

This dissertation challenges common assumptions that idioms are a piece of cake for native speakers and a hard nut to crack for second-language learners. The current studies test these theories among native-English speakers and second-language learners of Spanish. Participants completed a series of experiments measuring reading speeds and response times of idioms compared to non-idiomatic control phrases. These comparisons evaluate whether idiom processing is indeed advantaged (i.e., faster) for native speakers and disadvantaged (i.e., slower) for second-language learners.

Native-English speakers showed similar reading speeds and response times for idioms and non-idiomatic control phrases. Together, these results provide strong evidence that idiom processing is not advantaged for native speakers. In contrast to traditional theories, results highlight how idiom processing is characteristic of multiword processing in general. Two important factors in this process are whether the phrase is frequent and meaningful.

Second-language Spanish learners read idioms that were unique to Spanish more slowly than non-idiomatic control phrases. Consistent with traditional theories, this result from the reading experiments suggests that idioms used in figurative contexts present a unique challenge to non-native speakers. However, Spanish learners showed similar reading speeds and response times for idioms and non-idiomatic controls when idioms were shared between the bilinguals’ two languages (e.g., the Spanish idiom jugar con fuego means “to play with fire” in both the literal and figurative sense, as it does in English). Together, these results suggest that idiom processing is not fundamentally disadvantaged when bilinguals are more familiar with idioms in their second language.