This study explores the ability of Jordanian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to comprehend metaphorical expressions in English and investigates whether the use of their first language (L1) conceptual and linguistic knowledge may facilitate the comprehension of these expressions. For this purpose, the study adopts a contrastive model developed by Charteris-Black, which consists of six types of metaphor to compare and contrast in both English and Arabic. On the basis of this model, the researcher designed a multiple-choice test to assess the participants’ recognition of English metaphorical expressions. The results reveal that the participants’ receptive knowledge of metaphors varied on the basis of the six types of metaphor. The study provides evidence of the possibility that EFL learners display general conceptualizing capacity regardless of their language, which hints, possibly, at the potential universality of conceptual metaphor. It also proposes some pedagogical implications that may assist EFL learners in acquiring metaphorical expressions in English.

This special issue explores metaphor across languages, cultures, and discourses, bringing together papers that reflect the diversity and scope of this research area. The aim is to foster discussion and exchange ideas concerning the role of metaphor in conceptualization, persuasion, and the construction of meaning. In this introductory article, we focus on the two main themes: (1) the universality of metaphor versus cultural variations in its usage; (2) the communicative function of metaphor in discourse. Within these main themes, we discuss case studies that highlight specific domains, including universal and cross-cultural variation in metaphor usage, discursive and communicative aspects of metaphor, and multimodal metaphor. In this article, we provide a summary of the contributions of our authors that represent up-to-date research on issues involving metaphor from a wide scope of perspectives and manage to open up a methodological discussion within metaphor studies. Finally, we summarize the main results and suggest a brief avenue for further research.

This study provides an analysis of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, extracted from a 20,000-word corpus, based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. The analysis focuses on the semantic transparency of these compounds, on the one hand, and their linguistic creativity, on the other. In line with Benczes (2006,2010), we suggest that the comprehension of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds is possibly one of degree depending on which element is affected by metaphor and metonymy. Here, it is proposed that there are compounds which are more creative than others. We argue that in addition to the degree of semantic transparency and linguistic creativity of Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds, there are other factors that can influence the comprehension of these compounds; namely, the frequency of the compound, the conventionality of the metaphors involved in the compound and whether conceptual metonymy acts on the compound. Our proposal is supported by the judgments of 12 native-speaker informants, who were asked to provide the meaning of 35 Arabic metaphorical and/or metonymical compounds. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.

This study investigates the effect of blended learning on the development of clause combining as an aspect of the acquisition of written discourse by Jordanians who are learning English as a foreign language. Sixty participants majoring in English language at the University of Jordan took part in this study. The participants were divided into treatment and control groups, and the experimental design of a pretest and posttest was employed to test the effectiveness of blended learning on the ability of these participants to combine clauses in English using parataxis or subordination through a writing task. The results reveal that the treatment group outperformed their control group counterpart on the posttest in terms of verb morphology, distinguishing between nucleus and subordinate clauses, use of parataxis, use of subordinate clauses for temporal reference and to structure information, among others. The results also show that the use of technological devices improved students' attitudes to learning clause combining and made the learning process easier and more enjoyable. We suggest that blended learning develops the techniques of clause combining by learners of English as a foreign language, which in turn enhances their discourse knowledge in the target language and positively affects their ability to package information.

This article tackles a phenomenon in Urban Jordanian Arabic (UJA) where young individuals (mainly females) in Amman, the capital of Jordan, add the Arabic suffix -ɪk, which is glossed as second female singular or as a possessive pronoun, to English loanwords to sound more “modern,” for example, “I love you” becomes [lʌvvɪk]. Through examining the data, two initial hypotheses were formalized, namely, when the Arabic suffix -ɪk is added to English monosyllabic words which have a short vowel in the nucleus (e.g., love), the coda is geminated. However, if the word is disyllabic (e.g., mobile) or monosyllabic, but has a long vowel (e.g., juice) or a diphthong (e.g., face) in the nucleus, no gemination occurs. This article analyzes this phenomenon based on hierarchical syllable structure, metrical phonology, and optimality theory.