BODY PARTS AS FRAMES IN THE PERCEPTION OF TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

BODY PARTS AS FRAMES IN THE PERCEPTION OF TURKISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Abdramanova, Saule

The aim of the research is to find out frames of body parts through the perception of English idioms with body part components by native speakers of Turkish learning English. The study is mainly based on the assumptions of the theory of frames by Minsky (1974) who proposed the frame system for cognitive sciences. Vygotsky (1986) introduced conceptual frames in his theory of human development, and Fillmore (2006) operated with a term of “frame” in his frame semantics. The above mentioned theories have been applied to make up a network of ‘nodes’ and ‘relations’ that Turkish learners built up while guessing the meaning of English idioms, with the focus on their body part components. The experiment was conducted among first year students with an intermediate level of English from the department of English Language Education at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Participants were asked to fill in questionnaires to guess the meaning of fifteen English idioms with components of body parts, such as eyes, hands, head, heart, leg / foot, nose, and tongue. To ensure validity and reliability of the experiment interviews were taken from five respondents of the experiment, and a think-aloud protocol was conducted with six other respondents. The qualitative data obtained in the experiment were analyzed, and the results showed that Turkish students provide different frames of body parts meanings based on their universal, cultural and personal world perception.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2014

3536