Open Access

Tamás Kispál

• The cognitive metaphorical motivation of idioms is one of the most treated subjects in English language articles about teaching of idioms. In German-language phraseodidactic literature it is a rather rare phenomenon. The metaphorical motivation of several idiomatic expressions is undoubted. In this article we argue for their cognitive metaphorical motivation. It is hypothesized that the joint representation of several typical context examples, with idioms of the same conceptual metaphor, not only promotes the recognition and understanding of idioms but also the detection of cognitive metaphorical motivation of idioms. Context-sensitive tasks make a significant contribution to uncovering and learning the metaphorical idioms for learners of German as a foreign language. The learning-enhancing role of this method for the acquisition of idioms and their meanings are to be illustrated with the example of the conceptual metaphor life is a journey, the metaphorical idioms based on this conceptual metaphor, and an example worksheet.