The role of authentic texts in the early levels of idiom acquisition

• Autor(a) principal: Silva Netto, José William da
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Linguagem em Foco (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.uece.br/index.php/linguagememfoco/article/view/7772
• topic: Expressões idiomáticas; Compreensão idiomática; Estádios de aquisição idiomática; Referenciação; Idioms; Idiom comprehension; Stages of idiom acquisition; Referencing

It investigates how authentic texts help children in the early levels of idiom acquisition to understand idiomatic structures, through a theoretical and methodological intersection of Phraseology and Referencing. As a theoretical contribution, we resorted to works by Gibbs (1993), Cacciari (1993), and Vega-Moreno (2003) to discuss some features of idioms, while Levorato (1993) and Vulchanova, Vulchanov and Stankova (2011) served as cornerstones to describe the levels of idiom acquisition. It was decided to resort to works on referencing by Koch (2004), Marcuschi (2005, 2006), Teixeira (2010), and Cavalcante (2011) in order to situate idioms in a pragmatic sphere. Our methodological design evaluates the way in which four seven/eight-year-old children attempt to understand the idiom Deus Grego through the application of semi-structured interviews, carried out in three phases and supported by the reading of the Monica’s Gang comic story (Maurício Araújo de Sousa) entitled Monicão e o Ciumão. The idiom shown in an authentic text allowed the children to mobilize world knowledge and establish meaning relations between verbal and non-verbal text. The results showed that, supported by the comics, children in the early levels of acquisition are highly dependent on context to establish the relationships between idiom and text, apply their prior knowledge in reading, as well as use images as a means to understand idioms.