Challenges of Metaphor Identification in L2 Essays

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This paper presents a small-scale study of figurative language production in essays written by Georgian learners of English. The method of metaphor identification implemented in the study is a slightly modified version of MIPVU (Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit), Instead of MIPVU's approach to the identification of lexical units and metaphors, which distinguishes phrasal verbs and idioms, our approach differs depending on the decomposability of multiword units, whether phrasal verbs or idioms. The study explores the major challenges that may arise in trying to assign figurative meanings to the constituents of multiword units, and it also illustrates the major steps of MIPVU: 1) identification of lexical units in the text, 2) determining the contextual sense, 3) selecting the basic sense based on a dictionary, 4) deciding whether the relationship between the basic and contextual sense is metaphorical or not. This study is part of a project to identify different kinds of errors made during figurative language production, with a special emphasis on the errors influenced by L1.