Abstract
This study focuses on learners’ perception of idioms and maps their perceptions of figurative language used in contemporary literary texts. Idioms are cultural denominators and thus vary across different cultures. Modern literary texts are moving away from the use of standard dialect of English towards including local variations that embellish the text and further help in connecting the l1 of the characters within the novel to English, their l2. Idioms are present in abundance in literary texts. Still, the significance of their usage in the novel and for the reader is the central question this paper tries to answer. This paper has chosen a collection of short stories entitled “This is How You Lose Her” by Junot dí az as the scope of the study. Fifteen students from the English department of Banaras Hindu University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU), were asked to ‘think aloud’ and explain their perceptions about the text with the help of idioms present in the text. A positive correlation was found between idiomatic analysis and textual comprehension. Lastly, the idioms presented provided insights into a literary analysis of the texts and further explained the violence perpetrated on women and their bodies.
Keywords: Dialect, Idioms, Junot Dí az, L1 Transfer, Second Language Acquisition.