This study investigates linguistic metaphors used by Swedish learners of English in upper secondary school. The aim is to provide a measure of the amount and distribution of metaphor in learner English, with the secondary aim of evaluating the method. 24 essays at two different proficiency levels were analyzed using the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU), a method developed by Steen and his colleagues in 2010, which has since become a popular method for identifying metaphor. The findings are in accordance with previous research and indicate increased metaphor density with higher proficiency levels. The results also show that metaphor is not evenly distributed among word classes: the word classes prepositions and verbs were found to exhibit the highest proportions of metaphor, whereas e.g. adverbs exhibited very few metaphor-related words. MIPVU was found to be a reliable and useful method even for learner English, despite not being created for this purpose.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-60616 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Ahlin, Angelica |
| Publisher | Mälardalens universitet, Akademin för utbildning, kultur och kommunikation |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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