Sessions

Cognitive influence of food and taste terminology

In this study, the researcher investigated the cognitive and cross-linguistic influence of food and taste terminology in Japanese adult learners of English and how it affects language learning. The researcher investigated if Japanese adult learners of English think differently to native English speakers about the taste of food and if different features of language such as ideophones and metaphor affect cognition. The researcher used the domain of food to conduct two cross-sectional experiments on sixteen Japanese English learners and sixteen native English-speaking participants with similar variables using quantitative and qualitative methods. This study builds on research from previous studies and works by O'Mahony and Isshi (1986), Backhouse (1994), Deignan (1997), Cook (2010), and Littlemore (2015). The experiments carried out in this study established a number of findings that suggest that the language features of food and taste terminology affect cognition and identified several differences in the way the two groups think about food including variances in schematic mental associations. The results also highlighted the need for teaching materials to be developed to enable teachers to focus of figurative speech, metaphor interpretation and other cross-linguistic influences. These teaching materials could be incorporated into upper intermediate and advanced level curriculums for adult learners to improve the developing language competence.