ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theoretical models of idiom comprehension in both L1 and L2, research has also shown that there are many factors that affect our comprehension process. These factors fall into two major categories, they are those on the part of the idiom and its use, and those on the part of the language user. Key factors on the part of idioms include transparency in meaning, semantic analyzability, syntactic analyzability, and context of use. Major factors on the part of the language user are age and cognitive ability, cognitive style, conceptual knowledge, L1 transfer and interference, and L2 proficiency. An idiom's transparency refers to its semantic clarity or, as it has often been called, its "literalness," for it is well known that the more literal an idiom is, the easier it will be to discern its meaning. The context in which an idiom appears plays a very important role in its comprehension.
