ABSTRACT
The current study examines neural correlates of bilingual figurative language processing. Spanish-English bilinguals were administered a meaningfulness judgment congruency task, in which they decided if a presented target was meaningfully related to a sentence they had just seen. We focused on the two components that are indexes of semantic analysis and integration, namely, the N400 and P600. It was hypothesized that the figurative meaning of an idiomatic expression (kick the bucket = DIE) will be more salient than the literal meaning (STRIKE THE PAIL WITH ONE’S FOOT) for the bilinguals dominant in English, thus evoking a faster response and smaller amplitude of the N400 and P600. Results showed a dynamic interplay of literal and figurative meanings of idioms, supporting the Configuration, Literal Salience, and Graded Salience hypotheses.
