COGNITIVE AND DISCOURSE STRATEGIES IN FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF NON-NATIVE ENGLISH LEARNERS (BS LEVEL) AT HAILEY COLLEGE OF COMMERCE

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate how BS level non-native English speakers comprehend figurative language and the interpretive strategies they use during spoken and written communication. It explores the cognitive and discourse strategies used by BS Banking and Finance students when interpreting metaphors and idioms and also intends to elaborate the role of contextual cues, imagery, and prior exposure in figurative language comprehension. The study adopts the qualitative design taking figures of speech specifically metaphors and idioms, in spoken and written discourse. Grounded in an adaptive model combining Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Dual Coding Theory, and the Embodied Simulation Framework, the research investigates the interpretive strategies used by 10 BS Banking and Finance students at Hailey College of Commerce, Punjab University, Pakistan. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic discourse analysis. The findings reveal that learners rely heavily on contextual inference, conceptual mapping, visual imagery, and dual processing mechanisms to understand figurative expressions. Challenges such as ambiguity and unfamiliarity were also noted. This study offers pedagogical implications for English language instruction by emphasizing the importance of figurative competence and the integration of idiomatic expressions in language learning curricula.