Idiom Comprehension in English as a Foreign Language: Analysability in Focus

This study aims to test if analyzability matters in processing the idioms of a language with which participants are not familiar. To this end, a group of Persian undergraduate students received 90 English idioms literary translated into Persian from three categories of normally analyzable, abnormally analyzable, and unanalyzable. They were asked to assign each idiom presented on the screen to one of the three semantic domains of anger, revelation, or secrecy. According to the speed and accuracy with which participants assigned each idiom, it was revealed that analyzability plays an important role in understanding the idioms of an unfamiliar language.