Cracking the idiom code
Gareth Carrol's research looks at the role played by idioms, metaphors and other common expressions in how we communicate in everyday life.
It has highlighted the crucial role played by familiarity (knowing a wide range of common expressions) and context (hearing or reading expressions in informative surroundings) in how we learn and understand “figurative” or non-literal language.
His work has also shown how language learners draw on knowledge and vocabulary from their first language to help learn and understand phrases that they encounter in the language they are learning, and shown how language users can pick up new patterns through repeated exposure to words and phrases.