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 investigateconceptual framesofbody parts,as perceived by native Turkish speakers while they learn English idioms that employbody-part components. The study is mainly based on the assumptions of the theory of frames by Minsky (1974), who proposed the frame system forthe cognitive sciences. Vygotsky (1986) introduced conceptual frames in his theory of human development, and Fillmore (2006) operated with the term “frame” in his frame semantics. The abovementioned theories have been applied to make up a network of ‘nodes’ and ‘relations’ that Turkish learners of Englishbuilt 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 and to guess the meaning of 15 English idioms that employbody-part components such as eyes, hands, head, heart, leg/foot, nose, and tongue. To ensure thevalidity and reliability of the experiment, interviews were conducted with five respondents 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 build different frames related tobody-part meanings based on their universal, cultural and personal world perception. Keywords: frames, idioms, body parts, English, Turkish

Article
PeerReviewed

International Burch University

2015

2799