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Metonymy in Spanish/L2 Teaching: A Cognitive Analysis of Color Idioms and Their Inclusion in the Córdoba Project Database

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Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2022)

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Abstract

This chapter examines the implementation of conceptual metonymy (Lakoff 1987; Littlemore 2009; Panther et al. 2009) in the design of didactic resources for the Spanish/L2 classroom. More specifically, the pedagogical potential of cognitive-informed techniques for teaching metonymic idioms with color is explored. Results from the cognitive analysis of the target idioms will be compiled at a metonymy database by the Córdoba Project (FFI2012-36523). The main objective is thus to reflect on the learning potential of raising Spanish/L2 learners’ awareness of the ubiquity of metonymy-guided inferencing. We also aim to contribute to enlarging our metonymy database. To this end, conceptual metonymy is first explored from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. Then, we briefly present evidence that attests its operation under and above the lexicon. To do so, we focus on the metonymic motivation of color idioms in Spanish. Based on our findings, we i) reflect upon the advantages of familiarizing learners with inferential reasoning using metonymy and considering CL-based principles and ii) contribute to developing the metonymy database.

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Acknowledgments

The present study is part of the Project ‘Researching conceptual metonymy in selected areas of grammar, discourse, and sign language with the aid of the University of Córdoba Metonymy Database (METGRADISL&BASE)’(PGC2018-101214-B-1I00), which is supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, from the ‘Mind, language and brain’ area.

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Correspondence to Beatriz Martín-Gascón .

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Martín-Gascón, B. (2022). Metonymy in Spanish/L2 Teaching: A Cognitive Analysis of Color Idioms and Their Inclusion in the Córdoba Project Database. In: Corpas Pastor, G., Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13528. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15925-1_11

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