THE STRATEGIES USED IN THE RECOGNITION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IDIOMS IN WORD BY WORD TRANSLATION INTO THE NATIVE SPEAKER’S LANGUAGE (on the material of Chinese idioms)

Abstract

In the conditions of psycholinguistic research the authors examine the cognitive strategies used by Russian native speakers in the recognition of Chinese idioms presented in word-by-word translation into the native language of the recipient. Since cognitive strategies belong to the mental sphere, they can not be accessed directly; however, both conscious and unconscious cognitive activity is reflected in the language. The study aims to define how the conversion of semantic information is realized in the space thinking ↔ language. The methodology helped to identify the strategies of identifying the meaning of foreign language idioms, and, basing on qualitative and quantitative indicators, to classify the Russian native speakers’ strategies. Using the method of introspection, the results were conditionally divided into 4 groups: phraseological units with a high degree of identification (100 % – 50 %), medium (49 % – 20 %), low (19 % – 5 %) and recognition below 5 %. Thus the strategies that generate this stratification of phraseological units were revealed. This practice is applicable in the study of any language