An Investigation into 4-5 Year-Old Monolingual and Bilingual Children: A Case of Comprehension and Application of Metaphorical Expressions

Abstract

Whereas Persian bilingual children in kindergartens make their best attempts to properly apply language rules, they cannot be as successful in understanding and applying metaphorical phrases as Persian monolingual children. The present study, therefore, adopting cognitive- sociolinguistics perspective, sought to study the bilingual factor in the level of comprehension and application of metaphorical expressions of these children. The methodology of this research was descriptive-experimental. The study was based on the Bialka-Pikul’s (2003) approach. It was found that bilingual children expressed more equalities than monolingual children in the metaphorical idiomatic expressions questionnaire and responded better than them. In the dual card test, bilingual children had the highest score in the metaphor of taste and the lowest score in the metaphor of sound. Monolingual children, on the other hand, had the lowest score in the tactile metaphor and the highest score in the metaphor of taste. It was concluded that while bilingual children received third-level score in the test of dual cards, monolingual children earned fourth-level score or full use.

Keywords

• cognitive sociolinguistics
• bilingualism
• monolinguals
• metaphor
• embodiment