Le français entre plaisir et complexité : une analyse des métaphores conceptuelles chez des étudiants turcs apprenant le français comme seconde langue étrangère French between Pleasure and Complexity: A Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Turkish Students Learning French as a Second Foreign Language

Abstract

In today’s world, where learning a foreign language has become a necessity, students’ perceptions of French play an important role in the language learning process. In this context, metaphors are one of the most effective ways to reveal language perceptions. A metaphor is a way of explaining one concept by relating it to another. In this sense, it provides important clues to understand how students perceive the language and approach the language learning process. Positive perceptions of a language can enhance motivation and support the learning process while negative perceptions can reduce motivation and make the process more challenging. Therefore, identifying these perceptions is of great importance for addressing negative perceptions and facilitating students’ adaptation to the learning process. This study aims to identify and examine the metaphorical perceptions of students learning French as a second foreign language at the A2 level at a public university located in the Western Black Sea region of Türkiye. The research was conducted in the spring semester of the 2022–2023 academic year with a total of 60 volunteer students, including 20 from the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 20 from the Department of English Language Teaching in the Faculty of Education and 20 from the Department of English Translation and Interpretation in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In this qualitative study based on a phenomenological design, the data were collected by asking the participants to complete the sentence “French is like … because …” and were analyzed using content analysis. The results show that the students produced a total of 55 different metaphors related to French, which were grouped into ten categories: serenity and pleasure, complexity, development, lifestyle, novelty, romantic, effort, type, guide and nostalgia. The eight most frequently produced metaphors were “music” (f=6), “art” (f=5), “love” (f=3), “poetry” (f=3), “puzzle” (f=2), “croissant” (f=2), “being intellectual, elitist and cultured” (f=2), and “ashura” (f=2). The study revealed that most students have positive metaphorical perceptions of French, although some described it through the metaphor of complexity, perceiving it as a challenging process. In addition, it was found that students in the Department of Psychology developed a more positive view of French compared to those in other departments.