Abstract

In 1988 and 2006, Applied Linguistics published Low’s and Littlemore and Low’s seminal theoretical accounts of second language (L2) metaphoric competence (MC). Meanwhile, attempts to elicit metaphor-related skills/competences have been mixed. Instrumentation has varied in reliability, been limited in scope, and used arguably flawed reliability coefficients (McNeish 2018). Factor analysis, used in first language (L1) MC and other areas of L2 research (Loewen et al. 2009; Plonsky and Gonulal 2015), has not been used to explore latent L2 MC variables. To address these issues, we developed a large battery of MC tests to elicit Low/Littlemore’s constructs, administering it to 112 L1 Mandarin speakers of L2 English and 31 L1 English speakers. Data cleaning revealed some operationalization challenges, but resulting overall reliability was high and demonstrated innovative use of ordinal omega as a powerful alternative to Cronbach’s alpha, the most common instrument reliability index in L2 research (Plonsky and Derrick 2016). Exploratory factor analysis suggested four latent L2 MC variables: Productive Illocutionary MC, Metaphor Language Play, Topic/Vehicle Acceptability, and Grammatical MC, broadly supporting Low/Littlemore’s proposals.

中文翻译：

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提升和衡量L2隐喻能力：从低到高的三个十年（1988）

摘要

1988年和2006年，应用语言学发表了Low's和Littlemore和Low的第二语言（L2）隐喻能力（MC）的开创性理论说明。同时，引发隐喻相关技能/能力的尝试也混杂在一起。仪器的可靠性各不相同，范围受到限制，并且使用的可靠性系数可以说是有缺陷的（McNeish 2018）。因子分析，用于第一语言（L1）MC和L2研究的其他领域（Loewen et al。2009; Plonsky和Gonulal（2015）尚未用于探索潜在的L2 MC变量。为了解决这些问题，我们开发了许多MC测试以引出Low / Littlemore的构想，并将其分配给112位L2普通话母语者和31位L1英文母语者。数据清理显示了一些操作方面的挑战，但由此产生的整体可靠性很高，并证明了创新性地使用序数欧米茄作为L2研究中最常见的仪器可靠性指标Cronbach's alpha的有力替代品（Plonsky and Derrick 2016）。探索性因素分析建议了四个潜在的L2 MC变量：生产性言语MC，隐喻语言游戏，主题/车辆可接受性和语法MC，广泛支持Low / Littlemore的建议。