13
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter will reveal some theories which are used in this study. This chapter only consists of two main sections, namely theoretical description and
theoretical framework.
A. Theoretical Description
1. Related Studies
Some studies were conducted related to the existence of idioms as part of English language Rohani, Ketabi, Tavakoli, 2012; Zarei Rahimi, 2012;
Bulut Yazici, 2004; Fotovatnia Khaki, 2012; Kainulainen, 2006. Research which was conducted by Rohani, Ketabi, and Tavakoli 2012 investigated how
EFL learners processed idioms. By designing certain steps to accomplish the purposes of the study, they randomly assigned some students who became the
subjects of the research. First of all, they divided ten students into two groups. The first group was asked to process the idioms from reading script while the
other group from watching movie. After that, the participants were addressed some questions related to how they tried to guess the meanings of idioms. Then,
the strategies obtained were used to conduct a survey to a larger population. The result was the context where the idioms appeared affected how the students
acquired the meanings of the idioms. Another study on idioms was also conducted by Bulut and Yazici 2004 to
18 Turkish English teachers. By using a study based on survey and making use of
14 questionnaire to collect the data, they found that the participants used more than
one strategies to reveal the meanings of certain idioms. The investigation also claimed that as EFL learners, the participants also tried to use their mother tongue
background knowledge to process the meanings of idioms. It is not a surprising thing because it is well known that learners often try to correlate and use their
mother tongue when they learn a new language, including English as their foreign language. Moreover, the research showed that the participants also tried to
translate the idioms literally to get the intended meanings. They defined the meaning of each word which composed the idioms and tried to combine the
meanings to get the whole meanings. Although direct translation could not be applied to all of English idioms, based on the results of the investigation, the
strategy was used a lot by the participants. Roselina 2012 also conducted another different study of idioms. In the
research, she focused on idioms which had relation to human body because according to some sources, those idioms are widely used in people daily
conversation. If in the previous studies the researchers tried to find out the strategies to process the idioms, Roselina tried to examine the use of
componential analysis to reveal the meanings of certain idioms. The study showed that by using the componential analysis as the keyword in this research there was
relation between literal meanings and figurative meanings in the process of acquiring the intended meanings of idioms, in this case the meanings in human
body idioms. Having conducted such study, she also encouraged the future
15 researchers to conduct the same study to see how componential analysis can be
applied to process the idioms about animals, food, or such. Having read those studies, the researcher got some insights which lead the
researcher to conduct another investigation on English idioms. Since the researcher is a member of ELESP students, the investigation discusses some
strategies which can be utilized to process the meanings of English idioms. The investigation will be conducted under semantic study by using linguistics
approach. Moreover, the researcher will use a survey and design some questionnaires and interview as the main ways to collect the data. And since this
study will be dedicated to ELESP students, the role of the students will be very useful. Hence, the researcher will choose some students from semester four as the
sample and as the representative of the population.
2. Theories of Meaning
Kategori