The Impact of Contextualization on EFL learners’ Comprehension of Metaphors from Relevance Theory Perspective

In second language acquisition, EFL learners need to develop both linguistic and conceptual proficiency to grasp metaphoric expressions. Understanding metaphors in second language acquisition is complex and influenced by various factors. According to Relevance Theory, comprehension involves the search for the most relevant interpretation of an utterance by means of a mechanism known as processing effort. Metaphors are seen as a way to create cognitive effect by mapping concepts from one domain (source domain) onto another (target domain). This study followed a mixed, cross-sectional design (qualitative-quantitative analysis).  The present study aimed at identifying what role context plays in EFL learners’ understanding of metaphors and took eight sessions to complete. To this end, in each session, 10 metaphors were given to 30 Upper-intermediate EFL learners who were selected based on convenience sampling. The EFL learners were required to guess the meaning of the metaphors after reading a text from Mark Twine’s short stories. Then, the learners were provided with contexts including the same metaphors in the first phase. The results of the t-test indicated a significant difference between understanding of contextualized and decontextualized metaphors (p value = 0.000; P <0.05). In facing with novel metaphors, EFL learners tend to resort to context as they had no access to any other sources. The findings of the study imply that context is a key element to provide cognitive effect for the interpretation of metaphors since contextual clues satisfy expectation of relevance.