A Case Study of Indonesian Learners In Comprehending English Idiomatic Expressions: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach

Abstract

This study aims to investigate whether the students can comprehend idiomatic expression through decoding tools deeper than encoding tools and the students can comprehend idiomatic expression in parts of body idioms theme deeper than the other two idioms, parts of body idioms theme and social idioms theme. The relevance theory that use to analyze the data is Fillmore’s theory in 1988 about elements of tools in comprehending idiomatic expressions, there are encoding and decoding. Therefore, this research paper applied a mixed method. The main instruments utilize for data collection is a translation test (containing 30 idioms in sentences) concludes parts of body idiom theme, foods idiom theme, and social theme. The test was given to 30 students of English linguistics department at the seventh grade at Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia as respondents. The obtained data through the translation test showed that the students can comprehend idiomatic expression through decoding tools deeper than encoding tools one and the students can comprehend idiomatic expression in parts of body idioms theme deeper than the other two idiom., parts of body idioms theme and social idioms theme.